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!

Kitchen Sink Quiche

 This is one of those dishes that is so easy and such a part of my everyday life that it never even occurs to me to photograph and post it...

Not the prettiest thing ever, but still pretty damn tasty!

I call it "Kitchen Sink Quiche" but it could just as well be "Fridge Scraping Quiche"... Kitchen Sink just sounds... nicer ... to me, y'know? And Kitchen Sink or Fridge Scraping it's a great way to use up any left over bits and pieces you don't know what else to do with!

The recipe it technically "self-crusting" which means you don't need to worry about a pastry case and the batter is made with both wholemeal flour and bran flakes (although you can leave out the bran flakes or substitute for plain, all-purpose flour if that's more your jam...) so it's full of fibre!

I'll attach the recipe (almost) as I found it in the (old) Edmond's Junior Cookbook... but this is just the humble beginnings of what could be a great dish! The original is vegetarian, but the photographed one here had bacon in it as well...

Or; sub out the cheddar cheese and mushrooms and chuck in smoked chicken, brie and apricot for a rather more up-scale quiche!

The only things limiting you are your imagination and the contents of your fridge!

Younger Brother was hungry and couldn't wait for me to snap a posed photograph...

So what are you waiting for?! Dig in!!

A Taste of Home: Afghans

What else is a girl to do when her body is all...

"No. Screw you! You missed those three seconds wherein I was actually tired... and now I'm gonna stay up AAALL NIGHT!!! WoooOOO!!!"

"What?"

"No, I don't particularly care that you have to be up at 6:30am to go count people in a train station. I'M GONNA KEEP YOU AWAKE UNTIL 3AM ANYWAYS!!!"

"VAHAHAHAH!!!"

...but blog? About food. It's the logical solution.

...What's a girl to do when she starts referring to herself in the 2nd person and giving her "Body" a voice and opinion of its own? Probably see a therapist... Well, I am studying psychology (still!) and you know what they say about us Psyc(o) kids...

As for the counting people in at train station? Yes. I'm actually doing that. It's for science. Leave me alone.

Anyway. I thought I said I was gonna blog about food? Yes. Right. Um.

So... I'm in Sweden at the moment - have been for the last almost four months (!)... Haven't really been cooking a lot. Cooking for one sucks. It's horrible! So horrible that I currently cook very rarely. And when I do I make massive amounts of whatever it is and then I have to eat it for days and days because I have THE smallest drawer in the freezer. You know the one. The bottom one which is shorter than all the others anyway... even before it loses half its depth to the freezer motor thingy. Oh! Woe is me! And stuff.

One thing I have gotten really into while over here is proper Kiwi Kai... which is a bit of a misnomer, really... because the only foods (according to Wiki) that are truly unique to New Zealand and New Zealand alone are sweet things... which don't really count as "proper" food... Sorry guys, turns out we didn't invent fush and chups, the BBQ or roast lamb... Who knew?!

But sweets we do well! And they've gone over pretty well too! I've made Lolly Cake (but I ate it all... *ahem* I mean, shared it with all my friends before I remembered to snap a photo), Chups and dup (chips and dip - not exactly a "sweet" but junkie all the same...) and Afghan biscuits! Now referred to by my corridor mates as "those cookies you make" - I've only made them once guys! But I smashed them out of the paaark!

 So - it turns out no one else makes cookies quite like these little babies? I've taken to describing them as "shortbread with cocoa and cornflakes topped with icing and a walnut" ... which works well until the person you're talking to asks in their cute, European accent "what is shortbread?"

*sigh*

Describing things. Not one of my greater talents. I usually say - "Look, next time I make 'em - I'll give you a call, yeah?" ... but I haven't made them since. Mostly because I used up the last of my flour and cocoa to make the photographed batch here... and as I'm basically moving out in a month (!) I can't really justify the Swedish prices to buy more...

Don't get me wrong though, these are totally student appropriate! There're only, like, 5 ish ingredients most of which you probably have naturally occurring in your pantries!

I'm talking about a shit-tonne of butter (technical term), some flour, a bit o' cocoa, a very small quantity of sugar and 1 1/2 cups of cornflakes... and that's it. Then there's the icing and essential walnut... but the cookie part is basically a pantry given!

The recipe I followed is fairly simple... there are some negative reviews on the basis of the biscuits being to "crumbly"... Guys. This is shortbread. It is crumbly. That's the point. Squish it! Or - start with only one cup of cornflakes they'll be what gets in the way of the sticking power of the butter.

Oh, and there's not a whole lotta sugar in the cookie for a reason - the icing is a little bit non-negotiable. Buttercream or icing/glaze is up to you! Just as long as it's there! The walnut? Up to you. For me, they make the cookie. The recipe I was using suggested flaked almonds (WTF?!)... some people go without entirely! O_o

Intrigued? I hope so! Read on, Mac Duff!

Honey Biscuits

Hi There! My name is Kat and I am the author of this blog! Apparently...

... if this blog had an author ... who actually wrote it ... regularly ... ?

As my dearest, darling pen pal Rosie will confirm, and as I have probably explained before... regular writing is not really my forte... I write to her about once a year. Mostly. Except for last year. When I wrote, like, three letters and posted approximately none of them. Pen pal of the year right here!

The point of this little rant is that I'm still here! Still cooking! Still blog stalking all my favourites... :) And now I will do some rabid posting for a little bit... if not here then maybe here or there...? We'll see...

For now, I'm going to start clearing some of my ever-growing back log of images of food that I've made!

Starting with these:

Honey biscuits! Which I made for a friends Nana who'd just had surgery and lives near-by...

This recipe comes from a book called, interestingly enough, Honey Biscuits , that I read in primary school about a boy who bakes with his Grandmother who explains where all the ingredients come from... it was my favourite book! The recipe which was explained throughout the story is printed in full...

This is the version I wrote out, from memory, so that I could bake them with my Grandma (I was probably 6-7)

And this is the translation of my pictograms (spelling wasn't my thing)

Down the far side of the page is 12-13 year old me writing the translations in... I've cropped that bit because it wasn't so cute!

These biscuits are small nuggets of spicy honey flavour and simple/cheap enough for students of any age to make!

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!

Caramel Sandwich Cookies

These have been heralded by my flatmates as "the best melting moment cookies ever!!!"

...I should have published these for Valentine's Day...

They vary slightly from traditional recipes because I've added a little milk to the dough so that it would be rollable so that I could make cookie cutter heart shapes.

But I still wanted that melting-moment feel - which is why I didn't use a standard sugar cookie dough...

The icing is runnier that I intended - because I wanted it to be frosting for my Choco-Caramel Cupcakes (I didn't post a recipe - but there's a picture of them...) but because this icing involves heat it's runnier and not fluffy like frosting... quite how I expected frosting I'm not sure... my brain was tired? But the icing is tasty! And it really made these cookies.

A note on frosting vs icing... if it's liquidy/doesn't hold its shape when piped, I call it icing - if it's pipeable and holds its shape, I call it frosting... and if it's totally liquid and runs everywhere with a mind of its own, I call it a "drizzle"... :)

Cookies on a Chess Board... Just 'Cause...

Read on for instructions on how to make your own crunchy, sweet cookies...

Jenny's Famous Chocolate Cake

When I was little... Like 12/13ish I "wrote" a cook book. By "wrote" I mean typed out all my favourite recipes, attached clip art images, printed them off and bound them into books which I proceeded to present to my family and friends as gifts. Copyright infringements were, no doubt, abound - but I never sold the cookbooks nor did I claim to have developed the recipes myself. They were just my tweenage favourites.

Served with chocolate sauce and yoghurt.

Featured in that book was my recipe for Jenny's Famous Chocolate Cake(s) - a delicious cake recipe made in a food processor (or by hand if, as a student, you don't own a food processor) that makes two dark, moist chocolate cakes. Which you can then layer or freeze one for later...

In the photographed image provided I've made the cake with 50% wholemeal flour and some rolled oats for extra fibre/texture but this is not necessary. The chocolate sauce I made is a recipe which comes from Edmonds Food For Flatters.

In my cookbook Katies Kool Kooking (don't ask...), when writing out the recipe I neglected to include sugar at all - instead suggesting that an auxiliary 2 cups of flour would be needed... and I left the cocoa out in it's entirety. The following version of this recipe has only one cup of sugar but it does include that all important half cup cocoa required to make the cake chocolatey...

Apple Pie

First, a word of warning: Don't expect your boyfriend who believes that "fruit has no place in dessert" to eat this. He won't. And then you will be cross. And then he will wonder why you are cross because you know he doesn't like fruit based pudding... and then you'll get crosser-er. Which is silly. Just serve this to your appreciative, fruit eating flat mates who will tell you wonderful things about life, the universe and your pie and then you will feel that all is right with the world. The end.

Now, on to the pie in question...

I made this because we had, all of a sudden apples coming out of our ears at our flat! It's a sort of amalgamation of two recipes, both from student cookbooks - so, I guess if you have a glut of apples - this counts as a "student" recipe...? Yay me!

I made the pastry from scratch - because I find pastry making an easy, and soothing thing to do. But if pastry making is not your thing - buy some sweet, short crust pasrty (although flaky puff would be good too!) from the supermarket, I won't judge! Promise. :)

Here it is, in all its glory!

A close up of my heart shaped steam holes... I was really proud
of these... I cut them out before putting the lid on the pie, but
wonder if, in future it'd be easier to cut the holes out after the lid
is on the pie...? Any thoughts?

The pastry recipe (and inspiration to make apple pie in the first place) comes from Sam but the filling I took from the Edmonds Food for Flatters cookbook... just because I wanted a slightly thicker filling than Sam offered.

The pie (with the exception of the Boyfriend) was a success! And I'll totally make it again when the need to cook some apples arises again...

Amazing Not-Too-Sweet Cream Cheese Icing

Computer Board Brownie Birthday Cake...

...Carrot Cake Cupcake...

...Red Velvet Cupcakes... 

...a little Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

...Big Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

...and a slice of that big ol' Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

What do all these cakes have in common? (Aside from the fact most of them are Red Velvet...)

You know it! Cream Cheese Icing... which is, basically, the bestest, most yummiest kind of frosting in the world... along with all the other kinds of frosting, off course!

Now, the problem a lot of people have with frosting is that it is really, really sweet... a direct result of all the icing sugar needed to make it stiff and fluffy... and not just butter or cream cheese with a bit of vanilla stirred in.

You'll often see question in the comments section "But *insert type of frosting here* is really sweet and it hurts my teeth... is there any way to make it less sweet?" and the answer is often "No - it's sweet because of the icing/confectioner's/powdered sugar... and you need all that sugar to get the right texture for the frosting"...

But... there is something else in your pantry with a very similar texture to icing sugar... and it isn't sweet... what I'm thinking of is... CORNFLOUR!!! (also know as cornstarch, I believe?)

Now, I'm not saying I'm the first to come up with this theory... but as far as I came up with it all by myself. :) And it really works for me! I just take out one 1/4 of the icing sugar the frosting recipe calls for and sub in that same quantity of cornflour... et voila! Frosting with the same texture you need but not as sweet as you dread...

I wouldn't sub any more than a quarter of the sugar for flour because then you start to taste it a little bit, which is kinda average. But a 1/4 or less and you have the same taste, only less sweet. Excellent!

Read on for my converted recipe for cream cheese icing...

EDIT: I have successful used this method for buttercream frosting too!

Carrot Cupcakes (with Cream Cheese Icing)

This recipe hasn't remodeled for cup-caking purposes - so, if you wanted to make a  full sized cake, or muffins? all you need to do is a adjust the cooking times and you're good to go!

The recipe is adapted from the one Moll Katzen features in her Moosewood Cookbook I've played around with the quantity of sweetener, the kinds of spices and halved the recipe overall. Finally I topped these little babies off with my delicious cream cheese icing (which I'll feature in another post...) and little icing carrots (I'd meant to use the walnuts I'd omitted from the batter - but I got carried away!)

Aren't they the cutest?!

I took them with me on a picnic where they were very well received. Flavoursome, moist and not too sweet (a trick of that mysterious icing) because they contain both wholemeal flour AND carrots they've got to be good for you, right?

A delicious cross section...

If you've got the stuff with which you can bake in your flat anyway - there's nothing particularly prohibitive about this recipe... if you're not living in a baking friendly flat - try these when you get home!

If you have to give the cream cheese icing a miss (not always a flat friendly ingredient)  they're almost as good on their own - or a simple drizzle of lemon juice and icing sugar would be a suitable substitute.

Video: Microwave Brownies

I made a video. It was scary. It is of mediocre quality... but! It is a starting point! And as I get braver and more experienced, I'm sure my video making will improve...

Overcooked and cakey on the edge, total gloop in the middle!

This recipe is usually totally reliable - but for some reason it/I(?) screwed up today... I had fun making it though!


Here're the measurements...


75g butter (unsalted), melted
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 tsp each salt and instant coffee dissolved in 1tsp water
1 Tbsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
3/4 cup plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking powder

Malteser Slice and Revolutionised Ganache

Malteser Slice has to be one of Boyfriend's favourite things that I make... so much so, that I made some with him in mind for his family Christmas present this year!

The original recipe comes from Birdie's Perch, a tea shop in York via Sam Stern's Student Cookbook which is the most used cookbook in my collection during the year! Originally, I loved his recipes but didn't like his writing style... I've since come to notice that his writing style is very similar to mine (bung this in here, whizz that a little bit, etc) it's kinda y'know chatty... and perhaps I was just jealous that this 12 year old (he's actually a couple of months older than me...) had written several successful cookbooks and I hadn't... then I thought to myself "Well that's more your fault than his, now... isn't it Katherine?!" and therein lies the rather jealous inspiration for this blog... "if  He can do it, so can I!"

Looong story short... Sam Stern is AWESOME, and I thoroughly recommend his student book for all students world wide!

... I'm sure there was a point in here somewhere ... ? ... Ah! Yes! Malteser slice, comes from Sam! He tops his with melted white chocolate and milk chocolate shavings... but I don't really like white chocolate all that much... so I decided that milk chocolate with white chocolate shavings was definitely the way to go!

Then it occurred to me, what about a ganache on top? This, was clearly a genius plan, aside from one, small detail... no cream. Which lead the thought "Cream is basically thick milk, right? So, why not milk instead of cream?" And yes - milk works brilliantly in a ganache! It comes out a little lighter and slightly sweeter (?) than a cream based ganache - but it sure tastes just as good and you can now call it "low fat"! Everything is relative, right? :) Never lookin' back now! - I call it Ganish!

A second change I made to my first attempt of this slice was to make my own biscuits for grinding in place of the called for digestives... I'll upload the recipe some day, but it comes from a chocolate cookbook that Daddy bought me for my half Birthday a couple of years back... I've previously posted a Pecan Pie recipe from that book... Although the chocolate biscuits definitely added another dimension to the slice it is, by no means, necessary! They are just as delicious with plain ole digestive biscuits! (Which I think are similar to Graham Crackers...?)

A sort-of cross-section.

Here, at last, I will post you the recipe!

Taste & Create: Chocolate Explosion Oatmeal Cookies

This month for Taste & Create I was paired with Alisa Fleming of Alisa Cooks... Alisa's blog is dairy free, not a realm in which I oft' walk so reading her blog was an interesting experience for me... further more many of her recipes are gluten-, soy-, egg- and/or nut-free... I had a great time perusing her recipes!

Eventually though, I found her recipe for Chocolate Explosion Oatmeal Cookies made with rolled oats, they are vegan, egg-, nut-, dairy- and soy free - therefore they MUST be a health food... and BOY! are they the tastiest health food EVER! :)

Beautiful, glossy, dark brown cookies...

Deliciously gooey in the centre - yes that's a broken-in half cookie... they're light enough to sit a-top a rose petal!

I was so proud of me - I was going to tell y'all about how I finally, finally followed a recipe to the letter! And then I thought about it... and how I:

•  halved the recipe...
• and then I didn't have any ground flaxseed (linseed), so I tried to replace it with wheat germ (apparently you can do that...?) but I didn't have any of that either so I used oat bran instead (I made that alternative up myself)... (ironically, if I'd been at the flat making these I would have been able to use flaxseed as directed...)
• and then I doubled the vanilla called for because we only had essence, not extract...
• and I added just the tiniest pinch of cinnamon a la Laura Vitale...
• and used all coconut cream, rather than coconut flavoured dairy-free milk and olive oil...

So, in the end, I baked like the Kat I am - to my own tune! But the cookies truly are delicious!

I do have one question though - I halved the recipe, but I made the large, 2 Tbsp sized cookies Alisa recommended... a whole 14 of them (after I ate, maybe a cookie's worth of batter... hey! it's egg free, it's all good!)... which begs the question: Have I finally found someone who enjoys eating cookie batter even more than I do? :)

Now I'm Just Showing Off: Callum's Computer Board Birthday Cake

My younger brother Callum is, affectionately, a computer nerd.

For his 18th Birthday this past April, I wanted to make him a computer-styled cake... as I'm a total novice cake decorator a fair amount of artistic licence was employed... but the basic idea was there... and the cake tasted good!

"Cake" in the broad sense of the word - it was in fact 2 layers of brownie and one layer of blondie... From each layer I cut a circle which I then shoved into another layer so that each was two toned:

Milk Brownie into a Blondie layer...

... Dark Brownie into a Milk Brownie layer...

... and a Blondie circle in a Dark Brownie layer.

Yes... I deliberately off-centred some of the circles - I thought that'd make it all look more awesome! :)

Each layer was sandwiched to the next with chocolate, cream cheese frosting - Callum's favourite....

Then - I coated the whole cake with the chocolate frosting, save for the very top which I used green frosting left over from when I made the carrot cupcake I have yet to upload... Woops!

Did I do a crumb coat? No.
Should I have? Probably.

Did I fridge/freeze the cake before frosting? No.
Should I have? Yeeeah... Probably.

Will I do so in future? If I remember...
Does the world end if you forget these steps? Apparently not.

I wanted the top of the cake to look like a computer chip/board... thing. Hence - the green icing... over the green I drew little yellow lines in square-ish patterns with writing icing, I tried to use buttercream, but I had issues... and I made the "connections" out of little silver cachous.

At the centre top, you can see the failed buttercream... but doesn't it look a little computer chip like...? If you don't know what computer chips actually look like... ;)

The chocolate chips around the edge are to hide the join between the brown and green icings.

Finally, around the vertical edge, I used tempered, white chocolate to make the binary number 0100 0011 which is the combination used to denote the letter 'C'... I tempered the chocolate to stop it blooming, and to give it snap - it's not a particularly difficult process... I might go into detail, one-day... maybe... :)

Mad piping skills right there... Not.

Further reason behind the tempering of the chocolate was - I hoped it'd hold up better when I ferried it from waxed paper to cake surface... All in all, I feel it was a success!

This is was the cake looked like from the inside after all that circling and shoving...

The final product - not bad, in my opinion!

Below, at long last I give you the recipe for the brownies... Each layer was played around with a little... next to no (brown) sugar and less butter than the original for the white layer (with extra vanilla), 1/4 as much sugar as called for for the milk layer, half as much sugar and butter for the dark... etc... For once, though, I'm going to share the original recipe... which came from a recipe book written by a family friend, Rosie Mitchell.

Maca-WRONGs

Back when I first started reading blogs - French Macarons were all the rage...


Macarons (not to be confused with coconutty Macaroons) are almond based meringue cookies sandwiched together with buttercream, cream, ganache, dulce de leche, jam... you get the idea! And they are notoriously difficult... As such they come with a variety of rules of how to make... And while making my "MacaWRONGS" I broke nearly every single one of them! Including a few of my own, personal baking rules...


The result - if not tpyical was a tasty, chewy cookie which I layered with hazelnut yoghurt for a classy(ish) dessert...

They don't look too bad, do they?

A list of the rules I broke to come up with these would include, but not be limited to:

• Don't even START to bake these if the weather is humid... it was raining...
• Use ground almonds, preferably shop bought (it'll be drier/less likely to clump) and for God's sake SIFT IT!... I used hazelnuts. I ground them myself (although I did roast them first to improve flavour/dry them out a little) aaand... I couldn't be bothered sifting my ground hazelnuts.
• Use day- to week-old room temperature egg whites... Well, my eggs whites weren't day-fresh (point to Kat!) but - I pulled them out of the fridge, maybe 5 minutes before I started making these...
• Whisk egg whites in a stainless steel bowl - or strengthen them with creme of tartar... There's a scientific reason for using a stainless steel bowl which Mrs. Humble explains best, long story short the medium you should most avoid beating your egg whites in is glass... guess what I used...?
• Pipe out small blobs of the meringue mixture with a piping bag... or use a spoon to make oversized puddles...
• Allow to rest for 30-60 minutes, or until tacky... that's the same as 20 ish minutes, right?

And then I probably didn't bake them for long enough - because, although my cookies did form feet (another point for Kat!) they stayed sticky inside/stuck to my parchment paper...

My own rules that I broke:

• Never, EVER bake in a bad mood... I thought I had failed a paper I'd worked really hard for (it turns out, I didn't actually fail said paper - my lecturer just forgot to add my exam grade onto my final result - thus I was 30% short! But I didn't know this yet... = very, very upset Kat.
• Never, EVER dye food purple the first time you make it... Yeah... I don't listen to me all that often...

Chewy, purple goodness...

The moral of this, rather long-winded, story is that although so many people say that cooking, and baking in particular is a "science" and you have to follow recipes to the letter - I disagree! Have fun with your cooking! Throw in a bit of this, or a bit of that - and see what happens!

I mean, look at me - I took one of the most rigid and difficult recipes on the internet and BUTCHERED (ALL the RULES!) and the result, although not perfect was edible, tasty, even! And I managed to create with it what was perceived as a rather spectacular dessert - I love my family!

I honestly believe that many thing in Life, as well as cooking, are only as difficult as you make them out to be... One day, I'll have to tell y'all how I've been casually making Baked Alaska since the age of 11-12 simply because no-one told me it was supposed to be really difficult...

In the mean time, here's my adaption of Mrs. Humble's Macarons - if you dare! :)

Taste & Create: Ginger Cake Cookies

Hmmm... I'm just a tad late with this month's Taste & Create... But, better late than never, right?

This month I was paired with Debbi of Debbi Does Dinner... Many of her recipes are aimed at being low-calorie - with a few naughty treats thrown in! :)

After much thought, I settled on Debbi's recipe for Ginger Cookies... and, after a little tinkering of my own - this is what I came out with:

Ginger Cake Cookies

Now, I named these ginger cake cookies because I substituted Debbi's 3/4 cup of vegetable oil for 150g of melted butter - this resulted in a cake-ish textured cookie - if you'd prefer more of a ginger snap go ahead and use the original oil.

The porous hardness of these cookies makes
them great for dunking!

Further alterations I made were to halve the amount of sugar called for - and to use brown, rather than white sugar. It'd be interesting, I think to experiment with relying only on the treacle/molasses for sweetness in these cookies... Another change was to substitute Debbi's molasses for treacle - because I didn't have any... To make these more student store-cupboard friendly, you could probably further substitute the treacle for the more common golden syrup...? Maybe. My final alteration was to the spicage used... Debbi recommends 1 tsp of ground ginger and 1 tsp of ground cinnamon within the cookie... I put 2 tsps of ground ginger into the cookie and used the cinnamon to spice the sugar the cookies were sprinkled with/rolled in before baking. But spice is such a personal thing - I encourage you to do with it what best suits your tastes! Oh! And I also chucked in a cup of wholemeal flour and one white instead of two white...

Overall - these were tasty little morsels they remind me somewhat of my favourite "Honey Biscuits" which I must post some time... Even if I don't make them again (my love of ginger has yet to completely mature...) I'm sure my Mummy, who was quite taken with them, will...

Below is my tinkered with recipe - for the original see Debbi's site!

PANIC! And true - cupboard scraping Student Food...

Hello Everybody!

Hello Shelby Mae!

Shelby Mae is my Taste & Create buddy for this month... She has a real awesome blog which she's written so that her children and future grand-children can have memories of her. Which, is basically the BEST reason to blog EVER!

And I was flicking through her blog... She have this really useful thing down the side where you can pick out key words... Thus Kat was drawn to cupcakes... And about halfway down this page, Shelby Mae talks about how she is doing her best to be vegan "Good on her!" I thought "I could never do that!" and then... "Wait! Do I have any vegan recipes on my blog?!" *looks at blog* "Hmmm... No, not reeeally..." and then "I don't even have any particularly healthy recipes on my blog. Wow!" *looks through photos on hard-drive* "No... no... no... Oh dear..."

So instead I decided to post these peanut butter cookies. Which are yummy, but contain eggs...

Peanut butter cookies. And no, Mummy, that photo was totally NOT taken on my bed... I would never eat in bed and I definitely make my bed every day... *grins a totally beLIEvable grin*

Now, before I post these... I want to alert y'all to the vegan/able and sort of healthy-ish recipes currently residing on study food:

Vegan:

Home Made Potato Fries
Muesli (provided you don't use honey...)
Fruit Salad Dressing

Annnd. Um. That's it.

Vegan-able:

Potato and Leek Soup - just leave out the cream/milk/cheese and use vegetable instead of chicken stock!

At the very least healthy! ish...

Cottage Cheese Loaf
Cottage Cheese Cupcakes
Pancakes
Spanokopita
Lemony, Fishy Rice
aaand:
Breakfast Muffins

That's it. The rest is not very good for you but very, very yummy - I promise! :)

Thanks to Shelby Mae for opening my eyes to the demographic (is that the right word?) my blog is completely missing! I'm really enjoying reading your blog! I look forward to seeing what you pick from mine...

And without further ado... the recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies

Daring Bakers: India-Scented Yeasted-Coffee Cake

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.


Now, that's the formalities out of the way... :) I joined the daring bakers - now each month I am challenged to bake a new and exciting recipe!

This month it was a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake. Which is a cake to serve with coffee (or in my case masala chai) NOT a coffee flavoured cake. Unless you put coffee in it. Which I didn't.

Aaanyway... This is what mine looked like:

From the outside - it was a wreath-shape!

And from the inside, all swirly and pretty...

One of the hostesses with the mostest(esses...?), Ria, made her coffee-cake with an Indian twist - as I happened to be at home when my parents were planning a Goan feast, I decided that then was as good a time as any to make my coffee cake.

You've seen how it looked, now let me discuss how it tasted. First off - it was yummy enough, but I'm not sure I'll rush to try it again... Here's why:

1) it was kinda dry - I will put this down to the fact that I don't believe my yeast worked... The cake was light, but dry.

2) there wasn't enough meringue. When I halved the dough recipe, I also halved the meringue part. Mistake. I couldn't tell it was there at all!

3) I didn't distinguish between sweet and savoury garam masala... My fault, I know! The effect was... interesting.

Otherwise it was a very simple dessert to make, and it looked stunning!

Perhaps, with my previous errors in mind, I should try it again...?

Watch this space!