Category: Baking

29
May
2016

REPOST – Devil’s Food Cupcakes

categories: Cake, Chocolate, Food Heroes, Nigella Lawson

What better way to end my devil themed blogiversary party than with some Devil’s Food from the Domestic Goddess?

I adapted Nigella’s recipe into cupcakes and much deliciousness ensued!

These were easy to make, and tasted amazing! A deep chocolate flavour and they were (apologies in advance) super moist. They also lasted for close to a week in the fridge…we are after all only two people and the mix made 15 cupcakes. I took half into work to share the love but someone managed to eat all of his half by himself. Not so fussy after all it appears!

If you head over to You tube you can see Nigella make this cake herself and hear her utter my favourite phrase of the clip when she speaks about mixing the cocoa, muscovado sugar and hot water into a “malevolently dark syrup”. It is Devil’s Food Cake after all!

I pretty much followed Nigella’s recipe except that I added a tablespoon of coffee granules into that same “malevolently dark syrup” because it wasn’t already rich and dark enough! Also because I made cupcakes, I adjusted the cooking time. Mine were in the oven for 18 minutes.

Can I just say….that frosting!!!!! OMG. I ate so much of it I felt sick. Then I ate some more because it was so good!

Devil’s Food Cupcakes

Print Recipe

A luscious chocolate cake with a rich chocolate frosting. Sinfully Good!

Author: Taryn Fryer
Yield: 12 1x

Ingredients

Scale

For the Cake

50 grams best-quality cocoa powder (sifted)
100 grams dark brown muscovado sugar
250 millilitres boiling water
1 tbsp coffee granules (optional)
125 grams soft unsalted butter (plus some for greasing)
150 grams caster sugar
225 grams plain flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs

For the Frosting

125 millilitres water
30 grams dark brown muscovado sugar
175 grams unsalted butter (cubed)
300 grams best-quality dark chocolate (finely chopped)
Sprinkles to decorate

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4/350°F.
Line muffin pans with cupcake liners. I made 15 cupcakes from this mixture but the number of cupcakes will depend on the size of your containers.
Put the cocoa, the coffee, if using, and 100g / half cup dark muscovado sugar into a bowl with a bit of space to spare, and pour in the boiling water.
Whisk to mix, then set aside.
Cream the butter and caster sugar together, beating well until pale and fluffy.
While this is going on, stir the flour, baking powder and bicarb together in another bowl, and set aside for a moment.
Still mixing, add the vanilla extract into the creamed butter and sugar . Then drop in 1 egg, quickly followed by a scoopful of flour mixture, then the second egg.
Keep mixing and incorporate the last of the flour. Then fold in the cocoa mixture, scraping the mixing bowl well with a spatula.
Divide this batter into the cupcake liners, filling to just over halfway.
Place in the oven and cook until a skewer comes out clean – it was around 18 minutes for me but will depend on the size of your cupcakes.
Remove from the tins and cool on a wire rack.

For The Frosting

Put the water, 30g / 2 tablespoons muscovado sugar and 175g butter in a pan over a low heat to melt.
When this mixture begins to bubble, take the pan off the heat and add the chopped chocolate, swirling the pan so that all the chocolate is hit with heat, then leave for a minute to melt before whisking till smooth and glossy.
Leave for about 1 hour, whisking now and again.
Spread or pipe the frosting over the cupcakes.
Decorate with sprinkles or your decoration of choice.

Notes

If you want to make this as a large cake, watch Nigella’s You Tube clip or you can find the recipe here

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/devil-s-food-cake

If you’re serving these to guests or even if there is just two of you, make sure you spirit one of these away in case you have the need for a Nigella inspired midnight feast!

Have a great week!

08
Mar
2016

Torta Mimosa

categories: Cake, Italy

Happy International Women’s Day!

Today we are celebrating with an Italian treat called a Torta Mimosa. In Italy, men give the women they love a sprig of mimosa on International Women’s Day (March 8th). In Australia, it is autumn and we will not have mimosa (what we call wattle) for another six or so months so swapped in some gorgeous lilies instead.

The Torta Mimosa is also traditionally served on International Women’s Day in Italy. Or as the Italians would say, Festa Della Donna – it sounds so much more glamorous when you say it like that doesn’t it?

The Torta Mimosa, as the name suggests is meant to look like a sprig of mimosa. I’m not entirely sure that it does but damn it tastes good!

It’s a sponge cake, filled with creme pâtissière (and I added some lemon curd), then covered with small squares of sponge to create the mimosa look.

It’s light, fresh and a lovely way to celebrate all the wonderful,amazing women in your life!

I am so very lucky to have a many inspirational women in my life – from family, friends, work mates, the tasty reads crew, friends from the gym, to the people who I have met through doing this blog. I feel privileged to know such a number of smart, witty, sassy, strong women, each of whom help to make my life, and the lives of all around them better and brighter.

Oh boy…this recipe is not hard to make but there are lots of parts.

I made Margaret Fulton’s sponge cake from The Great Australian Cookbook. Twice.
I used the creme pâtissière from The Joy Of Cooking
And I also used some bought lemon curd in the layers to add some tanginess.

Here is a link to a very similar recipe on Epicurious:

Torta Mimosa

To all you wonderful women, I wish you a very happy International Women’s Day!

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18
Feb
2016

The Dishiest Dish – Pizza Rustica Con Bietola

categories: Books, Chard, Dish of The Week, Dishiest Dish, Pastry, Podcasts, Prosciutto, Savoury Pies and Tarts, TV

“Hey mambo, mambo Italiano hey, hey mambo mambo Italiano
Go go go you mixed up Siciliano
All you Calabrese do the mambo like-a crazy”

This week’s dishiest dish has us going to Abruzzo for a Pizza Rustica con Bietola. AKA a savoury tart with chard . But Pizza Rustican con Bietola sounds so much more Italian and glamorous doesn’t it? And it will have you dancing the mambo because it is super tasty!

The recipe comes from Made in Italy by Silvia Colloca which was my choice when we did Italian in the Tasty Reads book club a few months ago.

Before I looked inside this book I had my hater face on. As if some B grade actress was going to have any cooking chops – and bear in mind the Claudia Roden book was one of the other selections. This was going to have to be pretty damn impressive to rival that!

Then I started flicking through and ye-es there were several pictures of Silvia looking both incredibly beautiful and impossibly thin. But it was also filled with what looked like some fabulous recipes and things that were not run of the mill. And everything I have made to date has been delicious.

This has included:

Calimari with Tomatoes and Wine
Woodsman’s Chicken
Herb Frittata with Goat’s Curd
Noodles with Zucchini Blossoms and Saffron Sauce
No Knead Spelt Pizza with Soppressata and Potatoes
Pasta Strips with Slow Cooked Goat Sauce

So, this is proving a pretty solid choice. Yay me! Well, really yay Silvia! But you know, I write a blog and it doesn’t get much more totally self obsessed than that so I guess yay me is valid.

Six Week Challenges – Update

I am still on my 6 weeks of no alcohol although I did take last weekend off! Saturday night we were having lobster – OH. MY. WORD. So good!!!! And there was no way on God’s green earth that I was not having a glass of sparkling with that! And Sunday we went out for a Valentine’s Day dinner to our favourite local Greek restaurant. And again – it would have been churlish not to have a glass of vino! But on the whole it is going well . I haven’t really missed it. I also haven’t felt many of the supposed benefits – weight loss, sleeping better, greater productivity etc.

I have been struggling with the daily meditation. I don’t think I have found the perfect time to do it. In the mornings I am usually too rushed and if i try to do it at night I fall asleep. Two places it did feel “right” were one day I did it as soon as I got home from work so it was a bit of a chance to decompress. The other was one morning when I had parked m car at the station, i just stayed in it and did my ten minutes there.

My new one, started February 15th is a flexibility challenge. Every day I will do a short workout designed to improve my flexibility. I am using the program from Fitivity. I have only done a couple so far and they have been fine but a bit boring. I’m sure they will get more challenging as I progress!

I have been thinking of more that I can do over the next few weeks /months:

No processed food
No sugar
Yoga everyday
No Candy crush
Journalling everyday

Are all on the list.

Reading

Room – Emma Donoghue

I have had this book on my To Be Read shelf for YEARS. And finally now I have taken the plunge and have started it – simply because I want to have read it before I see the film. I am probably 2/3 of the way through and I think it is very well written. There are certain parts that I have found quite confronting and other parts that have annoyed me but once I start reading it I find it difficult to put down. I am still having some problems with starting picking it up and starting it each day though…..

Room - Emma Donoghue

The Apologist – Jay Rayner

This is my current audiobook. Marc Bassett is a merciless restaurant critic. One day a chef commits suicide by roasting himself in his bread oven, leaving Bassett’s review taped to the outside. And so begins his career as the apologist.

I am not very far along with this but I am enjoying it so far.

Watching

My Kitchen Rules

I can’t help myself. I am utterly addicted to this. And the commentary on Flawless Vision.

Listening

I Know What You’ll Read This Summer Podcast.

I have only listened to one episode of this but they hated Girl on The Train almost as much as I did so it’s definitely worth another listen.

Room 101

From time to time I’ve decided to list a few pet peeves on here. Things that I would like to see banished to Room 101. Starting with:

Gluten Free Everything

When you label your bread, cakes and cookies gluten free you are doing a good service for those people who cannot tolerate gluten. When you label products that would never have contained gluten in a pink fit “Gluten Free” you are indulging in a cynical marketing ploy. STOP IT. I swear I saw water labelled gluten free recently. It made me want to break things.

Quinoa

Has no one else noticed how bad this smells as it is cooking. I made some the other day and the smell of it made me gag. I”m never cooking it again.

Cooked.com

I took out an annual subscription for cooked.com. This, for those of you who may not have heard of it is kind of like a netflix for cookbooks. Does anyone else have one of these? Do you find it useful? how long have you had it. Does it help you to choose which cookbooks to buy or do you not buy them anymore? I have not actually cooked anything from the site yet. I guess I’d better start! Stay tuned!

Kitchen Nightmares

I had one kitchen nightmare this week. I was all set to make Vitello Tonnato for bookclub only it was a new style “healthy” VT. So, instead of that gorgeous tuna mayonnaise, my tonnato was made out of tofu, anchovies and parmesan cheese. And it was rank! I have never been one to complain about the smell of parmesan cheese. I remember even in primary school when people would say “Yuck, it smells like sick”, I always thought they were nuts. This abomination of a tonnato not only smelt like but tasted like vomit. It was so bad I couldn’t even give it to the dogs.

Now though, I am craving a proper old school Italiano Vitello Tonnato. It’s a shame Silvia’s book does not have a recipe. However, The A-Z of Cooking does. There will be 1970’s Vitello Tonnato on here very soon. I just have to allow the memory of the horror that was that tofu tonnato to subside a little!

What Silvia’s book does have is this recipe for Pizza Rustica con Bietola. I am obsessed by those words. I keep repeating them in an increasingly bad Italian accent! If you would also like to become obsessed with this lovely tart here is the recipe:

This week I am looking forward to cooking…nothing. Because I have been really busy and not done a single bit of menu planning. However, we have a new Tasty Reads book so I might crack this open and give something a whirl.

Oh and this is is my new favourite you-tube. I have watched it about a million times since I found it.

What was the best thing you’ve made this week? What are you looking forward to cooking? Have you read anything interesting? I would love to hear from you!

Have a wonderful week!

Happy cooking.

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05
Feb
2016

Dishiest Dish – Apricot and Rhubarb Frangipane Tarts

categories: Apricots, Books, Dish of The Week, Dishiest Dish, Pastry, Rhubarb, Tarts, TV

It’s been a while since we have had a dishiest dish – I thought it was timely that we had look at some I had cooked successfully! I made these Apricot and Rhubarb Frangipane Tarts over the break. They were pretty easy to make and tasted delicious!

And who says you can’t play with your food? These are perfect for a little game of tic-tac-toe!

Or you can give them to people you like as little kisses and hugs. Valentine’s day’s a-coming. Why give someone flowers when you can give them some delicious almondy fruity deliciousness?

Who doesn’t love

Crisp buttery pastry – no soggy bottoms here!
A lovely sweet almond filling
The apricots and rhubarb, both of which have a natural tanginess help to make the tarts not too cloying or heavy.
An amaretto and apricot glaze

Never mind saying it with flowers. Proclaim your love with pastry!

My Six Week Challenges

This year, instead of setting a series of resolutions, I was inspired by my friend Ali to try a series of smaller challenges over the course of the year. I started mid-January with 6 weeks of no alcohol. The start of February sees me trying to build a meditation practice! I am aiming for 42 days straight of meditation. I haven’t figured out what I will pick up in mid-Feb but that’s half the fun – deciding what to do next! Hopefully some things I will stick with and some things I may do another six weeks later in the year!

Reading

I have been on a reading binge – I have had a real spurt of books I have enjoyed.

Disclaimer by Renée Knight

Imagine if you started reading a book that had mysteriously appeared in your house only to find out the book was about you. Specifically about you and an incident from your past which you have kept hidden from everyone – and the only other person who knew about it is a long time dead….

I would give this one a 7/10. The plot required a hefty suspension of belief on a couple of major points but all up, a fast paced enjoyable read.

All These Perfect Strangers – Aiofe Clifford

I loved this. But I am a big fan of the mystery set in academia. The Secret History is one of my favorite books and there are some similar themes here. This is not released until March – I was given a free copy for review but it is certainly one I can heartily recommend.

Funnily enough, the book in Disclaimer was called The Perfect Stranger. It was a really weird but totally cool coincidence!

9/10

The Grown Up – Gillian Flynn

This short story (it’s just over 6O pages on my Kindle) has more twists and turns than a spiral staircase. I loved it. And you can read it from start to finish in about an hour!

9/10

Luckiest Girl Alive – Jessica Knoll

Another outsider goes to posh school – mayhem ensues book. I did tell you I had a thing for them. Do not read this if you are one of those (annoying) people who has to like the main character in a book. Tifani/Ani in Luckiest Girl Alive is awful! She’s shallow and self obsessed, snarky and mean. I am about three quarters of the way through this and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I hope the end is not a let down.

I just noticed three out of the four of them mention Gone Girl. And have black, white and yellow covers. I’m sensing a zeitgeist.

Watching

Come Dine With Me

I started watching old episodes of the British Come Dine with Me on the telly over the break and am now utterly obsessed with it. I soon exhausted all the episodes available and am now mainlining episodes on You Tube.

The best part is the narrator. He is hilarious.

Oh and there was a series of episodes with my girl-crush Sabrina Ghayour of Persiana fame.

Pointless

Another British show. This is like a reverse Family Feud where people try to guess the least popular answers to a question, the goal being trying to get an answer that whilst correct, no one in the studio audience chose. It would be a fairly run of the mill quiz show if not for the hosts – host and co host who are just delightful. Charming, witty. Smart. I could watch the two of them banter all day!

The XFiles

So excited about this. We were a week behind the States so are only two episodes in. And it’s been great. Even though I have been watching the classic episodes, when I heard that theme music and saw that they had kept the old intro I got almost a little teary….

Other Stuff

Nigella

And speaking of getting a little teary, I went to see Nigella Lawson in conversation. She was brilliant. There a not many people for whom I would stand in line for and hour and a half just to get a book signed by she was worth every minute.

Now, how about a recipe for these babies?

This week I am looking forward to cooking:

Chicken, Feta and Zucchini Meatballs from my latest Tasty Reads Choice, Life in Balance by Donna Hay. We have our meeting in a few weeks and I feel I have not done this book justice. Time to get cracking!
A Biscotten Torte from the A-Z of Cooking
Tomato, Peach, Proscuitto and Mozzarella Salad. I am the only person in my family who likes fruit mixed in with salads that are not fruit salads. Does that make me weird? Or them?

Time to share. What are you enjoying reading / watching / doing?

What was the best thing you cooked this week?

Whats top of your list to cook next?

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18
Jan
2016

REPOST – A Peacock Cake & The Gala At Yala Part 1

categories: Birthday Cake, Cake, Children's Cakes, Sri Lanka, Travel

It was recently the fussiest eater in the world’s birthday and I made him a peacock cake!

Isn’t it adorable? Even if I do say so myself! And for the non-bakers out there it is all assembly, no baking involved. I mean, you can bake a sponge if you want but, for this recipe, it is absolutely not necessary!

Yala National Park – Sri Lanka

But more about our little peacock friend later. The peacock was a special symbol for us as it reminded us of the time we spent at The Yala National Park when we were in Sri Lanka ~~earlier this year.~~..OMG…last year! (2021 Note – This was originally posted in January 2016)

The National Park at Yala is a huge tract of land at the Southern tip of Sri Lanka.. It is home to a myriad of wildlife.
Yala is situated in leopard country and whilst we did two Safaris hoping to see one of these magnificent creatures, we were unlucky both times….or were we? Whilst we did not spot a leopard (pun intended) we saw so many other wild animals, living in their natural habitat that I felt utterly privileged to have been there.

Here was Mr Peacock:

There were monkeys galore:

Sloth Bears:

Some jackals playing:

A crocodile, most definitely not playing:

And a huge amount of elephants – my favourite part was when we saw two older female elephants and a cub walk down to a pond to have a bath and a drink:

Then the baby decided to have a little roll in the water:

Afterwards, they came right up to us, crossing just behind the jeep we were in.

Then there was this little one who decided to head off on his own:

The closest we got to the elusive leopard was these tracks:

On a more sombre note, there is also a monument to the people who lost their life at Yala in the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

I could go on about Yala all day and have thousands more photos of all the animals and all the birds but we have a Peacock Cake to talk about!

The Peacock Cake

The recipe comes direct from the Women’s Weekly Cheat’s Cakes 2. The idea behind these books is that you can buy a cake and then just decorate it instead of having to factor in baking as well.

I made the cake for the peacock’s body because there was a random box of cake mix in my pantry. But you could totally use a bought cake. The Women’s Weekly provides a template for the body. I copied it onto a sheet of paper, enlarging it a bit as it was really quite small and I wanted to use up as much of my cake as possible.

One of advantage of cutting around a template is that if a bit of cake “falls” off as you are cutting around it doesn’t really matter and you can have a little taste test as you work. You can call it being greedy if you must. I prefer Quality Assurance.

I used the tip of an ice cream cone for my peacock’s beak. A black jube, topped by a piece of white jelly bean topped by the end piece of a black jelly bean made his eye, with a swoop of licorice creating his cat’s eye.

And you will need something to fortify you because threading all those lollies onto the skewers takes a long time.

If making the Peacock Cake for a children’s party you can place more tail feathers in a glass by the side of the cake if you need too. Just be sure to remove the lollies from the skewers before handing them out.

Here’s the recipe for the Peacock Cake, straight from the book. I had to deviate from some of the sweets suggested because I could not find them – use what you have and let your creative juices flow!!!

This is so fun and colourful and would be a great party cake for a child of any age. If you want to make it and would like a copy of the template, let me know.

Have a wonderful week. I hope it’s full of pomp and pageantry. For me, today is the return to work after the Christmas break which is going to be tough! Back to the dreaded alarm and early mornings. On the upside, tonight I am seeing one of my food heroes, Nigella Lawson, live in conversation at the Melbourne Town Hall – it should be A-MAZING!

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