Strawberry and Smoked Salmon Salad

Just wanted to share with you this simple, and yet awesome salad that I made for our family’s brunch today!  Simply toss into a bowl a bunch of rocket leaves, sliced strawberries and smoked salmon, drizzle balsamic vinegar and olive oil and you’re done!  Season with salt and pepper if you like.

I was a little skeptical of the combination, as rocket alone can be quite bitter and the idea of fruit in my salad is kinda new to me!  But this truly works so well!  Easy and such a stunning salad to serve!

Hope you have enjoyed your 2nd day of 2012!!!

Mini Dark Chocolate Bundt Cakes

If you have never heard of Dorie Greenspan before, go and google her now and buy a couple of her books whilst you are there!  She is amazing.  I really really do love her books, her recipes, and she has recently launched her iPad app called “Baking with Dorie”!  What I find most amazing about her is her ability to connect with you – not only through her wonderful stories before each recipe that makes you feel like you know her, but her ability to bring you into her kitchen!  Her app seems a little steep for $15 considering there are only a handful of recipes which are already in her “Baking:  From My Home to Yours” – but what her app does that others don’t have is a really detailed explanation of what she does each step of the way as she bakes, and importantly WHY.  You really do need to visually see the texture of the mixture and the sound of the processor to really get it.  She lets you into some of her secrets that most chefs and bakers don’t share!  So even if you learn just one thing, for $15 it is definitely a worth while investment!

I love how Dorie seems so kind and warm and so honest – exactly what you would imagine someone who can do some pastry and baking magic should be like!

I had bought these mini bundt cake tins from a shop in Melbourne a few months back!  They are the Nordic Ware bundt tins which unlike a lot of other ones, are nice and heavy and thick and are a metal grey colour rather than the dark grey of most tins.  It’s almost a silver colour.  They are meant to be one of the best tins available to make your bundt cakes.

Okay, so this recipe is adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Mini Milk Chocolate Bundt Cakes – because in my haste, I didn’t realise I didn’t have much Milk Chocolate, and the bar I had, which I had made up the remaining with some dark chocolate (70%), seized whilst I was trying to melt it in the microwave.  I was obviously too impatient and microwaved it for too long.  It turned into this messy chunk of grainy chocolate.  Horrible.  I did prefer dark chocolate anyway, and with the batter all ready for the melted chocolate, I could not give up now.  I have a good stash of dark chocolate in my pantry at ALL TIMES (one never knows when you need to make a chocolate cake or chocolate chip cookies!  Apparently I am always prepared for emergencies – I like to think I have a mini grocery shop at my finger tips!!!), so I just finished up the bar that I had already opened to top up the failed milk chocolate mixture.  And you know what?  The taste was amazing.  I don’t think I could have had it any other way (I did add in a little caster sugar to the melted chocolate to taste as the original recipe had milk chocolate which is sweeter than dark chocolate).

The best thing was that because the chocolate flavour was so lovely, deep and rich, I could get away without the glaze or any icing sugar (I had run out of icing sugar and was too lazy to make the glaze!), and you wouldn’t have missed it!  Plus I was afraid the glaze would take the limelight away from the lovely indents of the patterns of the bundt cake!

The end result was a dark chocolate, velvet, smooth and extremely tiny crumbed type of cake, that was moist and with each mouthful you took, you got closer to chocolate haven! (imagine if there was the chocolate glaze on it!!!).

Ingredients (adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Mini Milk Chocolate Bundt Cake – this recipe only made 4 mini cakes for me, although the recipe said 6!  My mini tins had a capacity of 250ml).

Swirl
3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons sugar

Cake
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk
150g dark chocolate (70%), melted and cooled – then I added a couple of teaspoons of caster sugar

Glaze
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 teaspoons light corn syrup (I googled and a substitute can be golden syrup)
1 tablespoon chopped toasted pecans (optional)

Method
Center a rack in the oven; preheat oven to 350°; generously butter a 6-mold mini Bundt pan. (be generous – especially if you are using a tin with all the intricate patterns on it)

Make the swirl: toss the nuts, cocoa, and sugar together in a bowl; set aside.

Make the cake: in a bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together; set aside.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed until smooth, about 3 minutes (always scrape down sides of bowl as needed when mixing).

Add in the egg; beat 1 minute; then beat in the vanilla (don’t be concerned if the mixture looks curdled as it will smooth out soon).

Decrease mixer speed to low; add in half the flour mixture, mixing only until incorporated.

Add in the milk, and when it is blended into the batter, add the remaining flour mixture, again mixing just to incorporate.

Add in the melted chocolate; mix to blend.

Fill each of the mini Bundt molds with a little batter, then divide the swirl mixture evenly among the molds; top off the Bundts with the remaining batter.

Bake 20-22 minutes or until test done (your knife comes out clean).

Transfer the pan to a rack; let rest for 5 minutes; then invert them onto the rack and let them cool to room temperature.

Make the glaze: melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water OR in a microwave oven (but be careful and do this in short bursts of 20s)

Stir in the corn syrup; using a small offset metal spatula or a table knife, spread the shiny glaze over the tops of the cooled Bundts, then scatter the nuts, if using, over the glaze.

Let the glaze set at room temperature; it will take about 15 minutes.

Enjoy!!!

Super Easy Christmas Cheesecakes!

Merry Merry Christmas!!!  A little belated but nevertheless wishing you a very Merry Christmas!  I have been MIA for a very long time – I think it must have been at least 6 months!  I have been doing plenty and plenty of cooking but life seems to have been on the fast forward mode and time has just flown!

I love Christmas!  Whilst when I was young, the excitement of presents and what was beneath those colourful wraps made it feel like Christmas could not come sooner!  Now, Christmas seems to have come too quickly, and I keep telling A that I feel like I haven’t had enough time to really immerse into the festive season and really prepare for it –  If I could have my way, we would have a mini snow village in our house with little train tracks and train sets (we have been having our eye on those sets selling at the shops but the price tags are enough to make you jump!).

Anyway, this year I had visions of a dessert buffet and the over ambitious me had a list that was really quite long – however I was quite pleased with how it turned out!  So i want to share with you these REALLY easy christmas cheesecakes that I got from my Nigella IPhone App (which is awesome!!! Purchase it from iTunes!  At $4.99 it’s really worth it!) – I love Nigella’s cooking, it’s always fun, simple to put together and she manages to explain it so effortlessly that really does inspire you to get into the kitchen!

Nigella suggests to use martini glasses and she just uses strawberries – I used small short tumbler type of glasses instead and because it was Christmas, I used a combination of kiwifruit, strawberries and mango.  Totally delicious – I was impressed when I tasted the creamy cheesecake filling, and then of course had to lick more off the spoon!

 

Recipe by Nigella Lawson

Ingredients (Makes 4)

• 1/2lb strawberries (Very flexible – just use however much you want!) – for my version, I used kiwifruits and mangos too!
• 1tsp sugar
• 4 (approx half cup) of shortbread cookies (again, just blitz however much you want!)
• 250g cream cheese (at room temperature)
• 2 tbsp icing sugar (I ran out of icing sugar so I used caster sugar)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream (I bought single cream instead, so used that and it was just fine!)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Chop up the strawberries, kiwifruit and mangoes into small pretty squares (again it really depends on your mood and the occasion!)
2. Put the fruits into individual bowls and sprinkle with the caster sugar, cover with clingflim and give it a quick couple of stirs to coat the fruit with the sugar (Note:  I didn’t put sugar into the mangoes as I like its natural flavour)
3. Put the cookies into a freezer bag and bash it with a rolling pin till you get a sandy bag of crumbs (I used my awesome new kitchen friend – the food processor, it was brilliant!)
4. Measure the cream cheese and caster sugar into a bowl and whisk by hand (for me, I just threw it into my other beloved kitchen friend, the Kenwood cake mixer and let it do its job!  I used the whisk).
5. Then add the cream, lemon juice and vanilla, and whisk it gently to combine (again I used the cake machine to do this)
6. Divide the cookies into the 4 glasses and arrange it in the bottom of each one, and then scoop the cream cheese mixture on top, and top it with the fruits!

That’s all!  How easy was that!  The tricky part was probably trying to gently put the cream mixture into the glasses without making a mess on the sides of the glass.

Enjoy!  A dessert to impress without too much effort! Easy entertaining!!!

 

Hope you and your families had a lovely Christmas and wishing you a fabulous 2012! To more great times, food and love!

Easy & Fluffy Banana Pancakes!

Banana Pancakes

Bananas….. the taste of bananas are almost a memory of yesterday!!!  With the terribly insane prices of bananas these days ($12.98 per kg!  Which gets you about 5 bananas), one can only hope that the prices will soon drop, so we can go back to eating them! By the way, bananas are actually a herb and not a fruit! Interesting huh!!!

Anyway, weeks ago, I made these banana pancakes.  Boy, were they good!  I was looking for a easy and quick yet fluffy pancake recipe.  I have tried numerous pancakes recipes that require buttermilk or using the handheld beater/whisk, which although turn out good, I wanted something easy.  A recipe that I could use on the spur of the moment with the basic ingredients in my pantry that required minimal dishes.

Here we go!  I found a recipe by Bonnie Mo.  She calls her recipe “The Best Banana Pancake Recipe Ever”

Do give it a go!  I reckon it does deserve the title!

Ingredients:

4 tbsp. unsalted butter, plus additional for greasing the pan

1½ cups all-purpose flour

2 tbsp. sugar

2½ tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

1 small ripe banana, mashed

1 cup milk

2 large eggs

½ tsp. vanilla extract

Additional banana slices, for serving

Maple syrup, whipped cream, etc. for serving

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 200˚ F.  Melt the butter in a microwave safe bowl; set aside to cool slightly.  In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt; whisk together to combine.  In a another bowl, combine the mashed banana, milk, eggs and vanilla and whisk to blend.  Add the melted butter and the banana mixture to the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix gently with a rubber spatula until just blended (the batter will be slightly lumpy).

Heat a skillet or griddle over medium heat.  Grease lightly with butter.  Drop the batter in 1/3 cup portions onto the heated cooking surface.  Cook until a few bubbles form in the top surface and the bottom is golden brown, about 2 minutes.  Carefully flip the pancake over and cook on the remaining side until golden brown, 1-2 minutes more.  Transfer finished pancakes to a plate in the warm oven while you use the remaining batter, re-greasing the pan as needed.  Serve warm with maple syrup and sliced bananas as desired.

makes about 8 pancakes

Holiday Shoes

Easy Steps - Harmony

During my Melbourne trip last weekend, I bought shoes.  Yes shoes.  Nothing fancy.  Just normal essential footware.  However, these were blog-worthy shoes!  (No, my pair was the simple if a bit boring black suede ones, not the animal print ones!!!)

Wearing these shoes made me feel like I was on holiday.  On Wednesday, when I first wore them, and as Mr A. and I walked to the train station, I declared:

“These shoes are fantastic!  I feel like I’m on holiday when I wear them!”

To which Mr A’s reply was:  ”Great! Buy more!  They are much cheaper than going on a holiday!”

*scowls*  What type of answer was that!  Wrong answer!!!

However, really, I love my Easy Steps shoes.  Sure, they are no Jimmy Choo shoes or fantastic fabulous shoes with the red bottoms (I forget the name!), but when you choose a pair of footware that you need for essential everyday living, you want a comfortable pair, that looks nice, but that allows you to walk without being in pain and describing you have a foot full of blisters by the end of the day!  They have a lovely soft padding that makes your feet so comfortable (hence the holiday feel!).  It’s just so good!!!  So I highly HIGHLY recommend this brand of shoes.  I have bought several pairs of Easy Steps over the years, and trust me, they never fail, and are always a joy to wear!  I wear them till they are in such a sorry state that I have to discard them.

To my delight, in recent seasons, they have actually started to make them look more pretty and trendy and not shoes that look like what the older generation might wear.  At a full price of $119.95 (and they are always at least 30-40% off several times a year!), they are worth every cent.

I now wish I bought 2 pairs!!!

Hope all of us in Western Australia are enjoying our own mini holiday now – this long weekend!

Brown Sugar and Bossy Boots (Breakfast – Melbourne)

Banana bread with Vanilla Ricotta and Berry Compote $10.50

Honestly, I just love eating too much.  I love everything from buying groceries, to researching about food, to presenting it on lovely homeware, to the appropriate music to listen to when eating, and of course eating it.  It’s not a good thing.  Nevermind, we can always diet next week, can’t we? *Wink* (perhaps after the upcoming long weekend haha!)

So you can imagine how dangerous Melbourne was for me!  I spent 4 nights in Melbourne last week – on a girls trip with my lovely Mum and Sister.  We hit the shops, ate out, and dined at wonderful places – from the cheap to the expensive.  Melbourne has fabulous variety of food, and awesome coffee, and wonderful service.  Okay, I need to say this:  How GOOD is the service in Melbourne!  I felt so grateful  I had the best sales assistant in David Jones – yes I went to David Jones in Melbourne to buy shoes (didn’t have time in Perth!) – and the service was so good, I felt I needed to fill in a compliments card, write to someone to tell them about this, or shed a tear!  She never made me feel bad that I couldn’t decide, and she kept asking me to try more shoes on.  By the way, these were no fancy shoes – just your normal essential footware!  You can tell we are obviously starved of quality service in Perth.  I never really thought we had bad service in Perth, but compared to Melbourne, I’m sorry but we do.  Of course I’m sure there is horrible service in Melbourne too, but I reckon overall Perth could learn a thing or two from them!  Anyway, I have digressed!  Back to food…

A couple of awesome breakfast places in Melbourne that we visited that you have to go to next time you’re in town!

A place that is lovely to have the typical melbourne alley-way experience is Brown Sugar (25 Block Place, Melbourne) – it’s cosy, small and warm.  Coffees are served extremely quickly – and they greet you as soon as you come in.  Food is served promptly.  I discovered this place through a colleague – we now always pay Brown Sugar a visit whenever we are in Melbourne for work!

I saw the table next to us order this rather yellow banana bread – I thought it might have been corn bread, but it was really brown bread.  Very different type of texture – almost felt like a croissant crossed with bread.  It had bits of real banana in it and little chunks of walnuts.  It was served warm, and with butter, it was simply delicious!

Banana bread $6.90

Salmon with Poached Eggs, Rocket on blinis ($16.90)

This was really fantastic!!!  Three pikelet sized blinis, which was slightly crispy on the outside with the crispy edges, and it was slightly sweet.  Trust me, it worked perfectly with the poached eggs, salmon and rocket.  It was SO delicious! Yummy!!!  The salmon wasn’t smoked but that worked well as it allowed all the flavours to shin.

Skinny Flat White $3.50

Yes I forgot to take picture of the coffee – but here it is!  It was STRONG for a flat white, but it was wonderful.  I had coffee at about 5 different places in Melbourne and they all tasted really different.  This coffee was strong and full of flavour – very nice!

My friend C took me for breakfast at this cute little place in Brighton called Bossy Boots,  It was SO good.  Brighton was where my friend M’s wedding was held.  About a 20-25min drive from Melbourne CBD – from what I know, Brighton is like our Cottesloe.  Bossy Boots had the good old fashioned service.  We were served by a young pretty waitress who obviously knew the food and loved working there.  They served water in these cute vintage jugs (which I would have liked to buy – I hear they sell it in Armadale in Melbourne – but I can just imagine it would have been costly!) – which I forgot to take pictures of, but they were definitely eye catching.

The cakes on display looked utterly delicious!  Had I not been on my way to a wedding I would have definitely bought a couple to go!

Banana bread with Vanilla Ricotta and Berry Compote $10.50

How ADORABLE is this plate!!!  This banana bread was more like what I expected compared to Brown Sugar’s.  It was soft, warm and very banana, the vanilla ricotta and berries were the perfect partner.  Super delicious!

Corn Fritters with Crispy Bacon, Sour Cream, Avocado Salsa and Tomato Relish $17.50

YUM!  Quite simply – YUM!  I have started to really like avocado (never really liked it before! It seemed to mashy for my liking previously!) – and boy was this good!  Basically the corn fritter was like a corn pancake, and the crispy bacon, avocado salsa and little dollop of tomato relish and sour cream just created an amazing plate of colours and flavours.  It felt so fresh, so simple and totally inspirational for my next cooked breakfast that I make!

The coffee was not too bad – not as good as Brown Sugar’s, but definitely okay.

So next time you’re in Melbourne, do give both these places a go!  You won’t be disappointed!!!

 

Brown Sugar
25 Block Place, Melbourne
(03) 9639 7577

Bossy Boots
106 Bay Street, Brighton Melbourne
Ph: (03) 9596 6825
http://www.bossyboots.com.au/

Very Pink Vanilla Bean Cupcakes!

As most of you all know, I adore pink!  I really wonder if I will ever grow out of it!  Just love pink!!!  So can you imagine my delight when I found this awesome pink foil cupcake cases from Spotlight!  I practically squeaked with glee!!!  Of course I had to buy a packet straightaway! (now thinking about it, I should have bought a few packets!) – these lovely Robert Gordon cases were sold in packets of 25 for about $2.59 or was it $4.99 – hmmm I can’t remember!  However, a note – now my muffin tins are stained pink!

I was really happy with these cupcakes – well they are pink!  however, the cake itself has nothing pink about it!  It’s just a vanilla bean cupcake with a very lovely, silky smooth white chocolate ganache.  The cupcake itself was a little “dry” – without the ganache it would be way too dry, however with frosting, it was pretty much just right!  Next time, I’m thinking I might use yoghurt instead of milk to make it a little more moist!!!

Recipe – Vanilla Bean Cupcakes (Makes 24 mini cupcakes or as I made, 10 big cupakes!)

(Taken from the book High Tea At The Victoria Room - by the way, this is a gorgeous high tea book!  Even if you don’t bake much, it’s a pretty impressive book to just, well, have lying around your kitchen!”)

• 250ml Milk
• 1 vanilla bean cut lengthways (I cheated – I used vanilla bean paste!)
• 80g butter, chopped at room temperature (otherwise quickly zap it in the microwave – but make sure you don’t totally melt it!)
• 200g caster sugar (I love using caster sugar!  It makes your cakes so much finer and the crumb a lot more delicate!)
• 1 egg
• 310 plain flour
• 2tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Method

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees.  Line muffin tin with the cupcake cases.
2. In a small saucepan heat the milk and vanilla bean together until the milk just boils (I cheated – I heated the milk and vanilla bean paste in the microwave for about 45seconds till it was warm)
3. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for 1 hour (I was impatient and didn’t cool it till room temperature – oops!)
4. Remove the vanilla bean and scape the seeds, adding to the milk, and set aside discarding the remaining vanilla pod (not applicable if you use the vanilla paste!)
5. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (if your butter is not that soft this will take awhile longer – maybe 5mins.  Be patient, it will become light and fluffy almost white!  It reminds me of marshmellow!)
6. Add the egg, vanilla essence and beat well.
7. In a separate bowl sift the flour and baking powder together then add the salt.
8. Alternately add the flour mixture and milk mixture to the butter mixture until well combined.
9. Divide the batter even amongst the cupcake cases (by the way – I like using an ice-cream scoop to do this – it makes it more even.  Also – try to scoop all at once – ie don’t put another layer of batter to top up the cupcake like I did – you will find you have a slightly less perfect rounded top.  However – frosting covers a multitude of wrongs – so don’t worry too much if yours slightly rises in a slightly odd direction!).
10. Bake for 12-15mins until golden and the tops spring back lightly to the touch. (time really depends on how big your cupcakes are.  For the full sized cupcakes like mine was – and I did fill it practically to the top – it was about 20-25mins)
11. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe – White Chocolate Ganache (Important – make the night before!)

(Taken from the book The Art & Soul of Baking – a fantastic book!  It has lots of little tips and variations on recipes)

• 18 ounces of white chocolate (I used Cadbury’s Dream white chocolate)
• 1+1/2 cups heavy whipping cream (I used thickened cream)

(By the way, I used half of this recipe for the above cupcake recipe)

Method

1. Place the chocolate in the medium bowl.
2. Heat the cream in the small saucepan over medium heat until it begins to boil.
3. Immediately pout the cream over the chocolate.
4. Let the mixture sit for 1min, then gently whisk until the ganache is completely smooth and blended (Important – make sure you let it sit for 1min so that the cream can soften the chocolate, otherwise your whisking job will be a lot harder and you will have a harder time getting a shiny smooth ganache).   Whisk gently by starting from the middle of the bowl and working outwards – a tip I picked up from another book!
5. Let the ganache cool for 1 hour, then cover with plastic wrap and set aside to finish cooling at room temperature until it has the consistency of frosting (approx 8-10hours).

The ganache was gorgeous!  It was lovely to pipe with – it was so lovely and smooth and silky and no lumps!!!  it was a dream to pipe with it!

A pretty cupcake that is sure to be a hit with your girlfriends!!!

P.S.  By the way, the love hearts were made with the ready to roll fondant that you can easily buy at any grocery shops with pink gel colouring!  Do note that it takes quite a few hours to dry.  To quicken it up, you can pop them into the oven with the light turned on – make sure you place them on baking paper or they will stick!.  However for best results do make them a few days ahead, as when it is hot, it can still be a little soft!