By request...

I tweeted about this risotto as I was eating it the other night, because it was the most surprisingly yummy thing EVER. Delicious, I tell you.

A couple of people asked for the recipe, so here it is. It's from the Australian Women's Weekly (in the 1000 Best-Ever Recipes book)

Beetroot Risotto with rocket

2 medium beetroot (350g) peeled, grated coarsely
3 cups (750ml) vegetable stock
3 cups (750ml) water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large brown onion (200g), chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 1/2 cups (300g) arborio rice
1/4 cup (20g) coarsely grated parmesan cheese
50g baby rocket leaves
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1. Bring beetroot, stock and the water in large saucepan to the boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in large saucepan; cook onion and garlic, stirring, until onion softens. Add rice; stir rice to coat in onion mixture. Stir in 1 cup simmering beetroot mixture; cook, stirring, over low heat until liquid is absorbed. Continue adding beetroot mixture, in 1-cup batches, stirring, until liquid is absorbed after each addition. Total cooking time should be about 35 minutes or until rice is just tender; gently stir in cheese.
3. Serve risotto topped with combined rocket and parsley.

YUMMY. That is all. :)

"Blondies"

I've baked a few batches of these recently, and was waiting until I got them right before posting about them... but I don't think I'm going to, really, so here you go anyway. It's an American recipe for "Blondies" (a non-chocolate alternative to "brownies", both of which we in Australia would normally just call a "slice"). I found it here at Cookie Madness.

They look really good, and they have a great texture and taste, but I just can't get rid of this weird aftertaste in my mouth. Not so much an aftertaste, even, more a weird feeling, like strange invisible dry bits are stuck around my mouth. I don't know what it is - maybe I'm not browning the butter correctly, or not taking it out of the oven at the right moment... I don't know.

If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears... I really like these, apart from the weird mouth feeling!

Caramel Banana Cake

Clearly, I am insane. After complaining about the heat on Friday (it got to 32C in the house before I cranked up the air con), I turned on the oven, and the girls and I did some baking. Yes, insane - but I had a few bananas that were really going to be beyond useable if I left them any longer, so banana cake just had to be the order of the day.

This recipe's from a 1987 "Cakes and Slices Cookbook".... which I just realised is also an Australian Women's Weekly one - what would my kitchen be without the Australian Women's Weekly?

Here's the recipe - I used yoghurt because I didn't have any sour cream, and it turned out a successful, moist cake, but the cream would make it much better I think.

Caramel Banana Cake
125g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1 cup mashed banana (about 3 bananas)
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1 tsp bi-carb soda
3/4 cup sour cream
1 tbs milk

Grease a loaf pan. Heat oven to 180C.
Cream butter and sugar in small bowl, then beat in eggs one at a time.
Transfer to large bowl. Stir in banana. Stir in sifted dry ingredients with half the combined cream and milk, then stir in remaining halves. Stir until smooth.
Pour into prepared pan. Bake for about 1 hour, stand 5 minutes, then turn onto wire rack.

Caramel Icing
60g butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbs sour cream
1 1/2 cups icing sugar

Melt butter and sugar in saucepan. Stir constantly over heat without boiling for 2 minutes. Add sour cream, bring to the boil. Remove from heat and stir in icing sugar.

NB: You need to work quickly with the icing and get the cake covered before it cools too much because it goes sticky and clumpy when it cools. Also, it is disgustingly sweet, and even I, with my very sweet tooth and ability to guzzle sugary treats with joyous abandon, can't eat as much of this icing as I normally would.

(Sorry about this crappy photo. The light in my kitchen is dodgy and my dining table was covered in piles of laundry. Talitha (5) took the first two photos; evidently she's the photographer today!)

Choc-coated Wholemeal Cookies

Okay, firstly, this is ridiculous. It's early October, it's not even midday, and it's 29 degrees C in the middle of my house. I am far too tired for this kind of heat right now.

Well, at least 2 people want the recipe for those cookies , so I suppose I should post it! Like I said, it's from the Australian Women's Weekly book "Cookies". Have a look for it if you love cookies, it's packed with great cookies and biscuits, some healthy and lots... well, not. I'll post the original recipe and add the changes I made in parentheses.

Wholemeal Rosemary Butter Rounds
125g butter, softened
2 tsp finely grated orange rind
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/3 cups wholemeal self-raising flour (I used 2/3 cup white self-raising and 2/3 cup wholemeal plain flour)
1 cup walnuts (I didn't have any so I used some crushed peanuts and some hazelnut meal)
2/3 cup raisins, halved (I used sultanas - halving them isn't as tedious as it first sounds!)
2 teaspoons dried rosemary (I left this out)
1/3 cup orange juice
2/3 desiccated coconut (I used shredded)
2/3 cup rolled oats (I just plain forgot to put these in and it still worked fine!)

Preheat oven to 180 C / 160 fanforced. Line baking trays with baking paper.
Beat butter, rind and sugar in a small bowl with electric mixer until combined. Transfer to medium bowl; stir in flour, then remaining ingredients.
Roll rounded tablespoons of mixture into balls, place about 5cm apart on oven trays; flatten slightly. Bake about 15 minutes. Cool on trays.

Makes about 30.

To add chocolate coating: Melt 100g dark chocolate of your choice (I recommened Maya Gold of course!). When biscuits are cool, use a flat knife to spread chocolate on the underside of each cookie. Place in refrigerator until set. Store somewhere cool... move to Tasmania, perhaps, to keep yourself cool, too...

Better Cookies

I grabbed myself a block of (slavery-free) Maya Gold chocolate, and set about finding a cookie recipe with which it would be a good match. I didn't quite find one, but I adapted the Wholemeal Rosemary Butter Rounds from my Australian Women's Weekly "Cookies" (excellent boook! I also have the one called Chocolate. My kind of cookbooks). It includes orange zest & juice so I figured, without the rosemary, it was a perfect match for the orangey, spicy chocolate.

The cookies are quite busy, actually, with wholemeal flour (though I used half white), nuts, coconut, raisins, oats, plus the zest and juice. Awfully healthy-sounding, yes? So the dark chocolate was an exellent addition. The 100g block, minus two pieces promised to the girls, was just enough to coat 30 cookies.

I was quite pleased with myself when I tasted how well they turned out. If anyone wants the exact recipe, I can post it for you.

Ah dear.

I know I haven't posted for aaages again, sorry. It's because, you see, I had this post all planned out for the Friday before last, which was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, involving lots of Captain Jack Sparrow... and then I didn't get a chance to watch Pirates of the Caribbean to help me write the post and so I didn't have it ready and so... it didn't happen. And then everytime I thought of catching up on here I remembered that post and remembered how it wasn't done and I felt bad about it and really still wanted to post it anyway but then it just got far too late to bother and....

... and now you have a little glimpse into how my whacko brain operates sometimes!

I still will get around to that Pirates/ Captain Jack post, and one just detailing the reasons I love Johnny himself, sometime soon. Just thought I'd let you know I'm still around, meanwhile.

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I made some great choc-chip cookies a couple of days ago, and my goodness they were good. But gosh, they totally messed with my head because I used Nestle choc-chips. Nestle (the company) makes me want to throw up because it's such a revolting selfish greedy exploitative company and I NEVER buy their products (Noel had bought these choc-chips). I buy organic fair trade chocolate like Scarborough Fair or Cocolo or Green & Blacks' Maya Gold. But anyway these Nestle ones were in the cupboard so I used them, and man I'm so annoyed about how good they tasted! I was stuffing myself with these scrummy bites of chocolate that people literally SLAVED away to produce. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Speaking of which, I just remembered about a good place to buy fair trade chocolate products for baking or just general eating purposes (no choc-chips but there is cocoa powder and raw cacao): Cacao Power

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I took the kids to a free showing of Horton Hears a Who today at the library. What a good fun film. Gotta love Dr Suess.

A person's a person, no matter how small!

Treats for dinner again

Who needs real dinner, when you can have pancakes instead?



I had all the pancake-making fun to myself this time...

because the girlies were busy with their own mess...

Ah yes, the house was in need of a good clean up that night. Just the way a home should be.

Anyone having a birthday party?

Because, oh my goodness, I need a reason to make this stunning chocolate layer cake with cream cheese frostings. Yes, frostings.

Or, someone could make it for me. Either way, I'm good.

Another delicious meal inspired by Chrissy...

I've linked you to the crazy culinary creator Chrissy before, I know. But seriously. Go to her blog and try some of that food. Oh my goodness, you will not be disappointed.

I had a night to myself last night (which means Noel was away; I still had three kids to feed but they are so much less fussy than him!) - and it was shopping day, so I took the opportunity to buy myself some nice ingredients and have a bit of a feast!

To begin, Creamy Smoked Salmon Pasta. Noel wouldn't go near smoked salmon if you paid him... and as it turns out neither will the girls... but oh well, all the more for me me me! I just followed Chrissy's recipe there and added some boring button mushrooms (sorry love, the budget just doesn't stretch to fancy mushies when it's already stretching to smoked salmon!).

It really doesn't look all that pretty in the photo, does it? Trust me, it's good stuff.

For dessert, pudding! Self-Saucing Sticky Date Pud, to be precise.

Unfortunately mine didn't turn out as big and saucy as Chrissy's, perhaps because my dish was very shallow and wide. (I need to get me some better casserole/pudding/baking... ah, all sorts of dishes!) Nevertheless, this pudding was as delicious as big is big (to quote a children's book I've been reading lately). And the girls, who were "too full" to eat any smoked salmon with their pasta, wolfed it down in about 3 seconds flat.

Oh yes, it was good.

A Spot of Afternoon Tea

I had a troop of (well, three) kindy kids coming round for an after-school visit, plus their mums and younger siblings*, so needed something good-looking enough for the kids and impressive enough for the mums!

I reckon these banana cupcakes did just fine. I had three bananas becoming blacker and blacker on my kitchen bench and finally got around to using them. Mmmmm, sticky-sweet, gooey, brownish banana-mush...

Any old banana cake recipe does the trick, and I just used plain butter icing (though lemon is always nice too). And my B chose the sprinkles to help make them look boo-ti-ful:



*I do not recommend this. Especially on a Friday afternoon. If you must invite more than one friend around, make sure you know the kids and mums, so that you know they're not likely to throw rocks, break doors, and generally act like crazymen let out of prison...

Best Roast Lamb Ever.

Huge thanks to the gorgeous and inspiring Chrissy of You'll Eat It And Like It for posting this amazing recipe for a delicious "legga" (as she calls it).

Our neighbour, friendly and generous girl that she is, gave us a leg of lamb that she didn't have room in the freezer for. What a fabulous gift, hey! So yesterday I invited her 'round to help us eat it.

I've never cooked a proper lamb leg before (only those roll roast things and they never turned out very well anyway), and I prefer my meat *really* well roasted, until it's tender and falling apart, so I thought Chrissy's Greek-style legga sounded perfect and easy.

I didn't have any oregano as called for. I only had parsely, basil and coriander, and I don't know much about herbs so I just decided in my random way that coriander seemed like a better match than those other two. On it went with the lemon, salt, pepper and lots of butter...

Really, there can never be too much butter!

Into the oven for hours and hours.... yum yum yum. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the done deal! The house was a tad chaotic when I was serving up, and then we all tucked into it quick-smart.

By golly it was good. When I started to cut into it I thought I'd just about die with foodie pleasure. It was SO tender and juicy and just fell apart under the knife. We stuffed ourselves and then Noel and I kept going back to pinch the extra bits off the bone (our neighbour was too polite for that!).

I see many more lamb roasts in my future...

Milky goodness

This blog is about creative stuff, right? Well, what could be more creative than making, storing, and supplying all the food my bubba needs to thrive? Creative, in the purest sense of the word. Quite brilliant, I reckon. Almost as brilliant as creating the bubs in the first place!

Talitha feeding bunny while I feed Beryl.

It's World Breastfeeding Week, as I was just reminded in this post by the very talented Kate at Picklebums. I actually have a badge that says "I make milk - what's your super power?". I really should find it and wear it this week.

Beryl getting the very best party food!

Charlie's another booby-loving bubba.

So there you go. Now you know that I will definitely never be one of those movie stars desired for her cleavage more than her talent - so let's hope I have enough talent! :-)

Meh

The cake was good, but not spectacular. Moist and moreish, but to be honest I was expecting more from those lovely passionfruit. Ah well, it fed and pleased everyone, and that's what counts. :-)

Apple Passionfruit Cake

This cake was inspired by my friend Hayley the Crazy Baking Girl. I pretty much followed the recipe she used there, but I used self-raising flour instead of the flour plus baking powder and salt, and I used Granny Smiths rather than Pink Lady apples.

I also added some passionfruit I'd collected the day before that were just begging to be used in something scrumptious. We love our passionfruit vines, and there's not much nicer than using food from your own garden to add a bit of extra meaning to your baking.

I had four HUGE Grannies so I cut myself a heap of circles to arrange on the top rather than try to mix them all into the batter. Just look at the appley goodness:

I have to admit here than I broke the cardinal rule of cake-baking by taking it out of the oven halfway through the cooking time to drizzle the passionfruit pulp on top. It didn't completely kill the poor cake, but it did mean the cake took a lot longer than it should have.

In the picture the passionfruit seeds on top look scorched, but they actually seem to have stayed quite tender and sweet despite that. If I do this again, though, I'll probably abandon the idea of trying to bake the pulp on top and just drizzle it over once the baking's done.

The cake is waiting patiently on the bench for when my mum visits tomorrow... I'll be sure to let you know how it tastes...

Pink and Green and Chocolate all over...

So, it was Friday night. Noel was away for work, I was in a lazy don't-want-to-cook kinda mood, and the girls and I just wanted to hang out. The obvious choice: let's make chocolate cake for dinner!
Oh yes, I am the coolest mum ever; you better believe it.
Setting aside all thoughts of late-night sugar-induced madness, I rounded up the overly enthusiastic troops and got started.



I make chocolate cake just using a basic butter cake recipe. When adding the flour to the creamed butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs I just whack in however-much-looks-good of cocoa powder (I like to use lots so it tastes properly chocolatey!), and then add a little more milk to make up for the extra dry ingredient. Even better is to add some real melted chocolate too but I didn't have any around last night.
It's always an anxious moment handing over the ingredients to the small people; you never know what's going to end up all over the floor! But it's fun, and I find if you just expect them to do well, they appreciate the trust so they tend to rise to the occasion and live up to your expectations (um... mostly... more on that soon...).


See - lots of cocoa... mmmm....

So the cake was done, all baked and cooling down. Time for the icing...

Ooops! "Mummy the bowl was moving by itself!" Yes darling, of course it was. I took the photo because otherwise I was going to lose my temper! Grabbing the camera gave me a second to breathe, put on my happy Mary Poppins voice and say "oh well, accidents happen!"

Now, can you tell that we had conflict over which colour the icing should be?
And... dinner! Yum. :)

Oh and yes, the girls did go a little mental at bedtime, but a few giggles and bed-swaps later, they were asleep for the night by 9.30. Success!