Entries Tagged 'Food' ↓

Pannetone is a sweet Italian bread, much like a brioche only it usually has sultanas and mixed peel inside. You can get a similar bread without the peel called Pandoro or Bread of Gold which will do just as well in any of these recipes. It is a festive bread that’s often given at Christmas and Easter. I’m a fan of the stuff but there are ALWAYS leftovers which is a very good thing because it is even tastier forming part of another dish.

Here are five ways to use leftover Pannetone – or if you don’t have any Pannetone giving friends, it can usually be found fairly cheaply at a half decent Italian supermarket or grocery store.

1. Bread and Butter Pudding
Probably THE most popular way to use up leftover pannetone. You can take any of your favourite bread and butter puddings and just replace the bread with your pannetone.

I liked the sound of this one from Mangia Bene Pasta because it uses both citrus and Marsala and should pick up nicely on any peel that your panettone might already have.

Orange Bread Pudding (Serves
6 oz. panettone, thinly sliced (about 8 slices)
2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup rum
1/4 cup Marsala wine
3 eggs
2 tsp. grated orange zest
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
Confectioners’ sugarPreheat oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a shallow 3 quart baking dish. Layer the bread slices in the baking dish.

In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, combine the milk and sugar. Bring the mixture to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from heat and add the heavy cream, rum, and Marsala.

In a bowl, beat together the eggs, orange zest, and cinnamon. Slowly stir in the milk mixture. Pour the mixture over the bread slices, pressing the bread down to keep it submerged. Let stand 10 minutes.

Place the baking dish in a larger roasting pan. Pour hot water around the baking dish to a depth of 1 inch. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted mid-way into the pudding comes out clean and the top is golden.

Cut into squares. Serve warm or chilled, sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar.

Some more variations:
Pannetone pudding with blueberries (Tesco magazine)
Gladys’ Panettone Bread and Butter Pudding (has Cognac)
Panettone Toffee Banana Pudding Recipe (cdkitchen.com)

And here is Keith Snow from HarvestEating.com showing with a live demonstration of his recipe:

2. French ToastI liked this panettone french toast recipe because it was quite simple and recommends maple syrup and mascarpone on the side – I love french toast with maple syrup and mascarpone.

Betsy’s Panettone French Toast (from Montreal Gazette, December 13 2006) – Serves 4
6 large eggs
1 1/2 cup milk or cream
Pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
8 slices panettone or pandoro, about 3/4 inch thick
3 tablespoons butter for frying, divided useFOR SERVING:
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
Maple syrup

Lay the tall cake on its side to cut it, and each slice is a perfect star. Before slicing, trim off the brown top and bottom edges of your cake. For this recipe it’s best to leave the panettone or pandoro slices out and unwrapped, under a tea towel, to dry overnight. This will prevent them from soaking up the egg mixture too quickly and becoming mushy.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.

In a large, shallow bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk or cream, salt, vanilla extract and cinnamon. Dip each slice of panettone into the egg mixture so that both sides are saturated but the cake is not falling apart.Melt one tablespoon of butter in a large non-stick frying pan or griddle. Working a few slices at a time, fry the panettone over medium-high heat until golden brown, a little crispy and slightly firm to the touch, about three minutes each side. The inside should remain soft, but not mushy. Transfer to a baking sheet and keep warm in the oven. Repeat with remaining slices.

Serve with a spoonful of mascarpone cheese. Pass the maple syrup at the table.

Or you can try Giada De Laurentiss’ French Toast with Cinnamon Syrup.

3. Sandwich

Big City, Little Kitchen has Three Suggestions for Pannetone, including making toasted sandwiches from them:

Mini Panettone-and-Pear Sandwiches

4 thin slices panettone, crusts trimmed, each slice cut in quarters
1/4 cup Nutella
1/2 pear, thinly sliced
Butter, for frying

Spread each bread slice with Nutella. Lay 1 or 2 pear slices on 8 of the bread slices, trimming them to be flush with the bread’s edges. Top with remaining slices of bread. In a cast-iron pan, melt a pat of butter. When pan is hot, lay two of the sandwiches in the pan, frying until brown, 1 to 2 minutes, pressing down once or twice. Flip and fry another minute or so. Dust with powdered sugar and serve with coffee or tea (or maybe port?), and perhaps a wedge of brie. Yields 8 small sandwiches.

4. Toast (or Biscotti)

Epicurious has a very simple recipe from Bon Appétit

Cardamom and Orange Panettone Toast (6 servings)
1/2-inch-thick slices small panettone or four 1/2-inch-thick slices large panettone, cut crosswise in half
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
5 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
(You can also Substitute lemon peel for the orange peel, and cinnamon for the cardamom)Preheat oven to 400°F. Place panettone on on rimmed baking sheet and toast until light golden brown, turning once, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the butter and the grated peel in medium bowl and blend with electric mixer. Mix the sugar and cardamon together on a small plate.Remove panettone from oven, spread 1 side of each slice with butter mixture, then press into sugar mixture. Bake until topping bubbles, about 4 minutes.

If you slice the panettone finer and bake on low until crisp – you’ve just made yourself some very nice spicy Panettone Biscotti.

Hard or soft, I think they would be would be very nice dipped into Magia Bene Pasta’s Marscapone Sauce

1-3/4 cups whole milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 TB. flour
1 egg
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. grated lemon zestIn a small saucepan over medium-low heat, heat the milk until bubbles form around the edge. Remove the pan from the heat. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and flour. Beat in the egg. Whisk in the hot milk. Return the mixture to the saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the sauce comes to a simmer. Cook 1 minute. Transfer the sauce to a small bowl. Stir in the mascarpone, vanilla, and lemon zest until smooth.

5. Cassata

Marco Debiasi has adapted a recipe from Tastes of Italia (May 2004). It serves 6.

Ingredients
1/2 pound ricotta cheese
1/8 cup powdered (confictioners/icing) sugar
1 tablespoons chopped, mixed, candied fruit or orange and citrus peel
1/8 cup chopped semisweet chocolate
1 tablespoons Amaretto
1/2 teaspoon orange zest 1
/8 cup toasted pine nuts 6-oz.
panettone leftover (about 1/3 panettone)
sweet dessert wine
powdered cocoaPreparation In a large bowl combine the ricotta cheese, sugar, candied fruit, chocolate, Amaretto, and orange zest and whip until smooth. Line a mold with plastic wrap. Cut the panettone leftover into strips about 1/2-inch thick. Very slightly wet into wine and line the mold with about two-third of the slices. Press together. Pour the ricotta mixture into the centre of the bowl. Top with remaining panettone slices. Cover and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight. Invert onto a platter and decorate with powdered cocoa and chopped chocolate.

You could also replace the ricotta with ice cream and leave in the freezer instead of the fridge. Mmmmm….

Or you could try the ABC’s mini ricotta puds with served with butter apples.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Christmas!

I made an incredible but extremely time consuming and messy gingerbread as Christmas gifts last year (Jamie Oliver’s from his COOK with Jamie). I also made chocolate chip cookies but found them a little boring. This year I wanted something simple, I wanted it gingery but also wanted something chocolate-y so I thought why not combine the two? So I asked my friend Google and after providing a ton of recipes with crystalised ginger (I had none), he produced this stunner from Sunset magazine.

The original recipe called for molasses, but my pantry only had golden syrup but the substitution worked perfectly well. It also asked for bittersweet chocolate but I used milk which allows the ginger and spice to shine a little better. I didn’t have any sugar that wasn’t icing or caster, both of which would have melted, so I skipped that step. I also made them chunky – the original recipe wanted a size and thickness that was more akin to a ginger snap. Cookie batter is flexible, just go with whatever you feel like.

I think they are best warm so the chocolate chip cookie melts all over the place.

3/4 cup unsalted butter (I used about 190g)
2 cups flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 1/2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground nutmeg (used the pre-ground variety – it was fine)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
230g chocolate chips
1/3 cup granulated sugar (I’d use something like demerara sugar)

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Line a couple of baking trays with baking paper.

Sift flour, cocoa, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt into a bowl. Mix until well combined.

In a separate bowl cream the butter and the brown sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the golden syrup, egg and vanilla. Add the sifted dry ingredients until well combined. Stir through the chocolate chips.

Form batter into balls. If you wish you can roll each in the sugar. Space evenly on the baking paper. Flatten the balls to the desired thickness (1″ – 1/4″) using the back of a spoon or the base of glass (water will help stop the batter from sticking).

Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes depending on thickness and how gooey you want them to be. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a flexible dough. Cool on the pan for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

And Merry Christmas!

A few weeks ago, I popped into my local bookstore to kill some time absolutely determined that I wouldn’t buy ANYTHING. I somehow managed to resist Nigella’s new cookbook despite waiting for it for ages and it actually looking rather fun and doable. But all that steely resolution melted on opening up Provence Cookery School by Gui Gedde and Marie-Pierre Moine.

I’m not usually into those French cooking school books – often the cuisine is haute and needlessly fiddly. This on the other hand just smacked of rustic goodness and approachable simplicity. I bought it.

The structure of the cookbook is to follow what one would have learnt during a week in a Provence Cookery School. This means that the recipes are somewhat fixed in the region with the occasional ingredient that isn’t all that easy to find in a Sydney supermarket. Fortunately, they are the sort of recipes that lend easily to substitution with more accessible ingredients. There are also details like “Today starts with a visit to a busy [Provence] market)” which aren’t particularly useful but they do set the scene.

I made a broad bean soup the other day which froze well and was as tasty as I imagine most broad bean soups that don’t involve bacon can get. Today, however, I made a soup that was easily one of the best I’ve ever tasted (and certainly the best soup to come from my hands). I felt like the restaurant critic sipping the Ratatouille in the Pixar movie, only I had no childhood in Provence to be swept back to… nonetheless it made me felt like I should. The solid base of the bacon with the fineness of the courgette/zucchini and the fragance of the pistou made it the most damn evocative thing I’ve tasted in a long time.

I did use pesto instead of the correct pistou to make it a little easier. One day I will try out the proscribed pistou without the pesto’s pine nuts and Gruyere instead of Parmesan and the flesh of three medium tomatoes. I have little doubt that it will blow my mind even more than this one did.

I also forgot to add the beans (either 2 x 400g cans of cannelli/red haricot beans or 200g fresh white haricot beans and 100g fresh red haricot beans) other than the fresh green flat ones, but I think the soup was actually better for it. It was more delicate which made a nicer juxtoposition with the oompf of the pesto.

Here in any case is the soup I cooked today…

Soupe au pistou

1 ham hock/thick piece of smoked bacon (I used the end bit of bacon from a good butcher) about 150g (5 1/2oz)
250g (9oz) flat green beans
2 med potatoes
3 tomatoes
Sea salt
Black pepper (freshly ground)
100g small macaroni (or similar pasta)
150ml (5 fl oz) Pesto

In a large pot, add 2L (3 1/2 pints) cold water and the bacon piece. Bring to a simmer, cover partially and let simmer gently for 30 minutes (this is a good time to cut the vegies!). If you are particularly good, you can skim occasionally (have to admit that I didn’t as I was too busy cutting the vegetables).

Top and tail the green beans, chop into 2cm (1″) lengths. Chop the tomatoes and courgettes. Dice the potatoes.

Once the bacon piece has been cooking for 30 mins, add the vegetables to the water. Season lightly. Return to a simmer and let it bubble gently for 1 hour (again skim any scum off occassionally).

When the beans and the bacon are tender, remove the bacon bit and shred it (if you used a ham hock, take it off the bone too). Using a slotted spoon, place half of the vegetables on a plate and gently mash them with a fork. Return the mashed veg and bacon/ham to the soup.

Check the seasoning and season to taste, if it’s too strong add just a little water. Add the macaroni and you can turn up the heat a bit. Cook until the pasta is just tender.

Remove from the heat and stir in the pesto to serve.

I am freezing some portions of it so I’ll leave adding the pasta until I need to eat it, same goes with the pesto a spoonful then will be fine).

No pics of it, unfortunately, as I couldn’t wait to eat it but here’s a pic of the soup from the book (with the beans):

I missed out on a friend’s party because of work commitments so I wanted to make some cupcakes to apologise for my absence. But I didn’t wake up as early as I should have and I was cruelly reminded of a very important lesson – do not make cupcakes in a rush! Actually, do not make anything that needs to be iced in a rush. My little guys were almost cool when I was forced to try icing them. Almost cool was not good enough. The icing melted into sad little buttery pools. There were no cupcakes going anywhere any time soon.

While it was too late for the party, I did fix the botched cupcakes later. I just cut off the spoilt tops for the small batch that I had tried to ice and re-iced. Here are some pics from that batch:

I used my current favourite Magnolia Bakery recipe but I reduced the sugar in the icing because it was WAY too sweet and adjusted the milk and vanilla accordingly.

New Vanilla Buttercream Icing ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
4 cups icing sugar (eek!)
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

I made a mix of icing: plain, pink and to the the last third, I added some passionfruit pulp. I don’t know if you can tell from the pics,but the passionfruit pulp made the icing loose some of its consistency and while not quite curdling, it looked like it was about to.

here’s the happy looking plain icing:

and here’s the passionfruited icing:

I could have fixed this by adding more plain icing but then I was diluting the lovely passionfruit flavour so what I did was roll them in dried coconut and it solved the problem most delectably!

Here are some of the normal (ie didn’t get their tops cut off) batch with the passionfruit and coconut icing:

I liked this little guy, he had the passionfruit and coconut icing treatment but also got a little drop of pink buttercream icing as a little hat!

The name, that is. I love it.

Where did that come from? Stumbled on this cookbook by Thomasina Miers. Don’t know if it’s any good but her name is cool and the reviews are great.

This one looks interesting too – according to reviews it really does teach you how to cook restaurant dishes at home.

David Lebovitz in his fabulous blog tries out Heidi Swanson’s Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies which were a bit of a secret themselves and now more so that she’s taken it off her blog because it was revised for her new book and doesn’t want people to become confused(?!). Fortunately, David has still got his variation online.

Mesquite flour is supposed to be a bit of a wonder flour, low-GI and full of flavour and fibre. It’s not the easiest to find, but there is one source in Australia: Raw Pleasure stocks it for $22.95 for 500g – it’s also not cheap! Heidi also raves about Alter Ego organic ground cane sugar – I found an Australian source, but I will have to do some more investigation to see if I can find a locally produced equivalent.

I am very tempted to fork out the dough (no pun intended or avoided) to try out the mesquite flour, but as far as regular chocolate chip cookies go, I was pretty happy with the results from my standby chocolate chip recipe. While it is obvious to say that it all starts with a good recipe, are there any special tips not included in the standard text that make the difference between good and great?

My secret would be to keep an eye on how they are going and under-cook them slightly to give that soft chewy Mrs Field’s texture (if that’s what you’re into, if you like them crispy – and yes, that can be very good too – you might need to go with a different recipe or spread them out thinner) -  don’t wait until they’re brown all over, golden brown and brown on the edges is just right.

I find that’s enough but it seems there are a whole lot more secrets out there to that yummy cookie texture…

David gave up his secret to perfectly moist chocolate chip cookies:

Here’s a tip to help keep chocolate chip cookies moist when they cool: When you pull the cookies out of the oven, take a tablespoon and tap the top of each cookie once or twice to flatten any peaks and level them. Then let them cool as usual for the moistest, chewiest chocolate chip cookies imaginable!

In David’s comments, suzanne has another secret:

Another tip for keeping the cookies moist is to add an extra egg yolk (or, if there are 2 or more eggs called for, eliminate the whites from one of the eggs in the recipe).

Then you can use the extra egg white in David’s Banana Cake! [I thinks she is talking about this banana cake recipe, but there's also this healthy one and this decadent chocolate one.]

He also links to Adam’s tips/cookie tricks who also mentions under-cooking (which I think is more to the point):

• Use a flat baking sheet with no sides for perfect even cooking or turn a baking tray with sides upside down and place baking paper on the base so that it effectively loses its sides.
• Use an ice-cream scoop to dole out the batter and flatten them with a wet hand.

David had some tips a while back on how to keep cookies from spreading (though this can sometimes be the intended result – see this video for cookie slice. I actually quite like the spread myself where the cookies squish on the sides and get wrinkles similar to what someone described in Adam’s blog as the “shar pei” effect. I will try out the strong flour tip though – I do like chewy):

• Don’t whip cookie mixture – only beat the butter and sugar long enough so they’re blended well but not fluffy.
• Don’t butter baking sheets, just line them with parchment/baking paper or use a non-stick silicone baking mat
• Use stronger flour – one that’s higher in protein. This is the opposite of a cake flour. Sometimes stronger flours are called pasta flour as the chewy stretchy-ness is what you need for good pasta – the complete opposite of what you need for a light and airy sponge. I think the Italian type 00 flour is this from memory (but do check!). Strong flour is especially recommended for cut-out biscuits where you want them to hold their shape.
• Avoid super fine sugars. I guess this is castor sugar. His reasoning is they melt too quickly and cause the dough to be wet and spread.
• Chill/Freeze the dough beforehand.
• Check the temperature of your oven is not to too low. Otherwise it will prolong the spread time!

Some more cookie recipes (and a stray brownie one) I found writing this:
Adam’s Favourite Chocolate Chip Cookies from The Stewart* (mel recommended sprinkling sugar on top before baking as a cheat).
Alton Brown’s Chewy Cookies (using bread flour – ie a strong high protein flour, sometimes known as pasta flour).
Cook’s Illustrated Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies: subscription only but try Recipe Czar or this cookie Google group.
A whole lot linked at “Ahh, the Chocolate Chip Cookie“
Cook’s Illustrated Thin, Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies: subscription only (boo!).
Sunset Magazine “Seeking the perfect chocolate chip cookie“.
Neiman Marcus – Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (and the also the recipe from that stupid email urban legend)
Original Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Meg Hourihan’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Search and her subsequent findings.
Words to eat by’s Unbelievably Good Chocolate Chunk Cookies.
Karol’s Comfort Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (she also has some healthier food – after seeing so many sugary cookies (and having brownies for breakfast), I have to admit her Guacamole recipe and her detox soup are looking pretty damn fine).
David Lebovitz tries out Clotilde’s Very Chocolate Cookies.
Foodbeam’s Rage syndrome inducing Pierre Hermé’s sablés au chocolat et à la fleur de sel.
Heidi Swanson trying out David Lebovitz’s Chocolate Chip Recipe.

And the brownie recipe, Trial and Error’s Dark Chocolate Brownies.

It’s like going down the white rabbit’s tunnel… So many chocolate chip recipes, so little time and so few arteries to ruin!

*ie Martha, the boyfriend and I call her this because of a typo in a newspaper article on her release from jail, since she has always been know as The Stewart.

Whisked, not folded is their tagline.

Discovered via Taste and Tell during the great brownie hunt of 2007, the Daring Bakers is a blogroll of talented bakers who post about their culinary exploits – not all baking but all good. It is fun to close your eyes and randomly choose a blog to visit but be warned… any one of these blogs on the list will make you very very hungry.

I even found another brownie recipe – Cream Cheese Brownies (What’s Cooking in A Southern Kitchen) – looks sooooo yummy I think that will be next on my brownie list…

A friend of my boyfriend’s had a habit of whipping up brownies at her parties (usually around midnight or one am) – it was indeed a good habit to have (for us anyway). They were amazing, soft, chewy and thoroughly unhealthy tasting – an all round great tasting brownie. When I asked her for the recipe, she just told me it was in the Donna Hay cookbook. But which one? Amazon lists 69! Fortunately for me, my housemate happened to have a few of her books and pulled out a brownie recipe. It was simple (the sort one could whip up at odd times of the early morning if inclined) and it was decadent. It had to be it.

There was more than one batch of those brownies done but I stopped baking and the housemate moved to another city with the cookbook and I found myself on Wednesday night having a terrible brownie craving and no recipe. I had STUPIDLY never written the damn thing down.

I searched all over the internets and found some lovely brownie recipes including a few that were from Donna:

• Brownie Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (Katie’s Kitchen)
• Double Chocolate Brownies (Though small, it is tasty – who also gave recipes from a yummy veggie feast for a friend)
• Totally coco crispy ricotta and brownies torte (from the totally charming foodbeam)
• The Barefoot Contessa’s Outrageous Brownies (The Cookbook Critic)

But no simple one-pot, no melting of chocolate bits brownie recipe. So then I had the brilliant idea of calling the ex-housie and asking her which cookbook it came from – she was after all in just a different city not a different country! It was Off The Shelf. And here is the so simple, one could almost do it blindfolded, recipe:

Mix the following ingredients in a bowl with a wooden spoon until smooth:
250g soft butter
1 1/3 cups plain (all-purpose – ie not self-raising) flour
2 1/4 cups sugar (I used brown sugar)
3/4 cup cocoa
4 eggs
1/4 tsp Baking powder

Spoon it into a baking tin and cook for 40-50 mins in a 170C oven. I had quite a big tin so the stuff was spread fairly thinly – I reckon I probably could have gone 35 mins for extra gooey-ness.

For an Americanised version of the recipe and a picture of them as adorable cupcakes check out Taste and Tell’s Browniebabe.

The good thing about this recipe is that because it’s so dense, it keeps moist for ages (well, if you can stop people eating them – very hard!).

Last week was cupcake week at work – not officially, though that is an idea… – one person brought in leftover cupcakes and this inspired another to make up a wonderful batch with rosewater meringuey icing. I did my part by going past a cafe that sells my favourite cupcakes in the world (they are only mini but perfectly decorated and they taste exactly like you’d hope pretty cupcakes will). But once you start the cupcake train, you just can’t stop it and my cupcakes would have all gone at the cupcake so it meant I just had to make my own.

Now, I haven’t ever had the greatest success with cupcakes, they’ve always been perfectly edible but just never hit the particularly high mark I set for cupcakes (except for my blissfully decorated little wonders, I can’t eat store bought cupcakes). It was suggested to me that what one needs is a Kitchen Aid (or presumably another good quality stand mixer) in order to get the required fluffy-ness for that sweet sweet sponge. I’d always done them by hand or I once tried a hand held beater and it wasn’t that great either. Fortunately for me, I was the happy recipient of a Kitchen Aid mixer quite a few birthdays ago but it was gathering dust at my parents’ due to lack of space. So I promised my dearly beloved that if he made some space for the mixer, I’d bake him something. Appealing to the stomach works every time – the record player found a new home and I got my little helper back again.

So to find a recipe – I ended up just typing in “best cupcake recipe” into Google and getting some amazing sites dedicated to the versatile cupcake. There’s a whole universe of cupcakes out there. Some of them completely blow my mind. Still when it comes down to it, my favourite cupcake is just plain vanilla sponge with a good vanilla butter icing.

(Way more than) 52 cupcakes highly recommended the Magnolia Bakery recipe (pdf) from More from Magnolia. Tried it out and was indeed very nice. The Kitchen Aid made a huge difference, I discovered textures that I’d never seen in my cupcake batter before. In the end I got a cupcake that was sufficiently cupcake tasting so I was very happy. I took them into work and they went down very well too. A word of warning, the icing is very sweet so I only put a light covering but if you want to get fancy 52 cupcakes’ Cupcake Queen describes how she gets those pretty pretty swirls:

It took a some practice, let me tell you!

Basically, I used a small icing knife. First I put a scoop of frosting on the cupcake so that it covers all the way to the side and flattened out on top. Then I put more frosting in the middle of the cupcake. Then I drag the knfe around in a wide circle (while rotating the cupcake in my other hand) that gets smaller in the center.

It makes at least 24 cupcakes but I got 33 out of it because my cupcake liners were a tad smaller. I also only used about a third of the icing so I might make another batch on the weekend. I’ve made a few small changes (made it metric and changed sugar to castor sugar and confectioner’s sugar to icing sugar).

Yummy but very sweet Magnolia Bakery cupcakes

Cupcake
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups castor sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Line at least 24 muffin tins with cupcake liners. In a bowl add flours and stir to mix together. Preferably in a stand mixer, cream butter on medium until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat for another 3 minutes until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beating well after each addition. Add the flours in three parts, alternating with the milk and the vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not overmix. However, don’t be too disconcerted if it looks like the mixture looks like it might curdle – it did with mine and I was worried I might have overbeat at the egg addition stage. I probably did with my excited reunion with my Kitchen Aid, but all the same they turned out perfectly fine.

Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners – don’t fill too high – 3/4 is generally suggested but I filled them to the top of the liner and it was fine. Bake in a preheated 180C oven for 15-20 minutes. Remove cakes from tins and cool on a wire rack. Top with the Icing.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
6-8 cups icing sugar (eek!)
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Beat butter with 4 cups icing sugar and milk and vanilla for 3-5 mins on medium until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the remaining icing sugar beating well after each addition (approx 2 mins) until the icing makes for good spreading consistency. I would recommend not using all of the icing as it is very sweet. You can tint it all colours of the rainbow but apparently pink is the most popular. I try to keep them additive free as far as possible and the plain icing is a pretty yellow colour from the butter. I had some fairy sugar crystals and balls in pink and lavender so I relented and sprinkled them on.

Since making them, the Cupcake Queen has moved to choosing this recipe from Billy’s Bakery as her favourite. That will be next on my cupcake making list I do believe…

Today, one of the cupcake making work friends made some tasty chocolate and raspberry brownies. So it reminded me of my perfect and brilliant simple Donna Hay recipe but I couldn’t find it anywhere (it was in the cookbook of a flatmate who has since moved out). I was stunned that I hadn’t noted it down on my blog anywhere. I did a search for Donna Hay’s brownies but to no avail, I got some very complicated ones that involved melting chocolate. I knew that wasn’t my baby, so I ended up having to ring up my old flatmate. I found it and I made them, the batter was like icing – way too sinful. They’re cooked and waiting to cool, the whole house smells of brownies. It might have to be breakfast as I’m about to nod off. I won’t make the mistake of forgetting to note down the recipe, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.

Made this last night, it was most tasty. Should freeze well too. I just served it with a green salad as there are veg and potatoes in the dish already.

1 kilo of pork neck, cut into 1″/2cm cubes
Butter
Olive Oil
2 med onions, chopped finely
1 sprig sage (approx 3 tbsp), roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
Massel (or other non-MSG, non-preservative brand) vegetable stock cube
1 cup red lentils, rinsed
2 carrots cut into 1cm crescents (cut in half lengthwise and then chop horizonally)
6 small/new potatoes cut into quarters
2 bay leaves, torn up
2 tbsp parsley

Brown pork in batches in a mixture of oil and butter, place in a casserole dish.

Fry onion in butter until very lightly golden, add to pork, along with chopped sage, garlic.

Dissolve stock cube in 1 1/4 cups (310 ml/10 fl oz) water and add this to the pork mix, bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered for 1 hour. Turn the pork so that is well covered by the liquid.

Add the lentils, carrots, celery, potatoes and bay leaf to the stew with 2 cups (500ml/16 fl oz) water. Bring to the boil, reduce heat to simmer, covered for 40 mins.

Remove lid and continue to simmer for 30 ins or until the sauce thickens. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Garnish with chopped parsley.