Chocolate or Vanilla Slab Cake

An emergency cake, simply stirred together in one bowl, quickly cooked into a slab, this cake is perfect for last minute visitors, lunches or to use as a base for several ideas for quick desserts.  It is cheap, easy, fast and can be varied in many ways.

Ingredients:
125grams butter
1/2 (half) cup milk
2 large (60gram) eggs
1 cup Self Raising flour
3/4 cup sugar (castor for vanilla cake - soft brown for chocolate cake)
2 tablespoons either custard powder for vanilla cake or cocoa for chocolate cake

Line a 11" x 7" slice pan with baking paper. 
Pre Heat oven to 160 degrees for fan forced or 180 degree.

In small microwave proof bowl, melt 125 grams butter,
add 1/2 cup milk
add two large eggs and lightly whisk through milk and butter

Into a mixing bowl
Sift 1 cup Self raising flour
2 Tablespoons either custard powder for vanilla cake or cocoa for chocolate cake
Add 3/4 cup sugar - castor for vanilla cake - brown for chocolate cake

Using a whisk, Stir dry ingredients together,
Add butter, milk, egg mixture and whisk together,
Pour into slab pan and cook in 160 degree oven 25 to 30 mins or until cake springs back when lightly touched.

The cake makes a thinish slab, and can dry out very quickly if overcooked.

Chocolate Cake with Caramelised Blood Orange Slices
Serves 2
I cut a slab from the end of the cake, halved it, sandwiched it with a simple chocolate ganache of melted dark chocolate and sour cream, topped the tower with two wedges of caramelised blood orange slices and served each half with a dollop of vanilla yoghurt.

Variations:
Chocolate Cake
Cut in half, spread top of one half with raspberry Jam and either sour cream or whipped cream
spread chocolate ganache or butter icing on bottom of other half slice, sandwich together and top with more chocolate ganache or butter icing.

Vanilla Cake
Cut in half, spread top of one half with Lemon Butter and whipped cream. Place other half on top of cream and either ice with lemon icing or more whipped cream

Ice with Passionfruit Icing. 
Ice with Lemon Butter Cream Icing.

A new beginning.........

....well, its been awhile, there have been things that have kept me from blogging, nothing to spend time lamenting, just life I guess.....

Anyway life being what it is, it now feels like a good time to take up the bloging reins again. We have a tender tummy in our little group around the table, as well as one who needs to have the apetite tempted, one who needs to cut back on the much loved carbs and starches and one who needs to have a little bit of care for the cholesterol levels........oh yeah! and the biggie, the cook has been bad, very very bad........she has been giving the credit card a flogging, all in the name of  'the sacred stash'........oh dear, we need to budget.
Well, as we gather around our table, I will leave it to you to decide..........are all the criteria being met?? probably not and lets not loose sight of the fact that the Shitzu needs to be kept happy, there is nothing worse, belive me, nothing worse, than a depressed Shitzu, and he only likes chicken.

So for a tender tum I made Potato, Bacon and Leek Soup from these ingredients, 

Chop the bacon into small pieces, and crisp it up in just a little oil, about 1 teaspoon, remove the crisp bacon from the stock pot and place it to one side to be added to the finished soup later.
Melt the 50grams butter in the same pot, add the 2 chopped leeks, 1 chopped onion, 3 peeled and cubed potatoes and 1 clove chopped garlic, toss to cover in the butter and bacon brownings.
Put the lid on the pot and sweat the vegetables over a medium/low heat for 10 mins.
Remove the lid and add chicken stock to just cover, add the bay leaf and 2 sprigs of thyme, a generous grinding of pepper and sea salt. 
Simmer until the potato is soft and done.

Remove the thyme and bay leaf and using a stick blender, blend the soup in the pot, until it is smooth.
Return the bacon to the soup and simmer for another 2 mins.  Scatter the chopped chives and parsley over the top and serve with hot crusty bread rolls, straight from the oven.
It must have been o.k. as more bowls disappeared during the evening.

As a bit of a treat and an appetite tempter, I thought Garlic Prawns would be a good idea.  Well, I'm not that fond of prawns, having had a run in with one that certainly was not fresh some years ago, and yes, I have held a grudge.
 
Phoned one of the local fishmongers that have their own trawler, and fessed up that I really was a novice in the prawn purchasing game, Des was a font of knowledge and kindly took the time to give me some pointers and explained how prawns are sized, going past the small, medium and large that are all that you usually see available.  It's possible, and in fact easy, to order very large prawns, they come as U6 or U8, an old weight measurement from Pounds and Ounces days, U6 you get 6 to the pound, and U8 you get 8 to the pound, how easy is that!

I ordered a Kilo of U6, and was delighted to fetch these home to the kitchen.  That's a dinner plate they are resting on.

being larger they were easier to clean, still messy, but easier than their smaller cousins.  There are a squillion 'Garlic Prawn' recipes all basically the same.
I wanted these to have a fair bit of sauce but didn't want to use cream, so I made a prawn stock with the 'peelings', that is the legs, shells and tails. 

While the prawn stock was simmering away, I rustled up an avocado side salad.

TOMATO AND AVOCADO SALAD

6 baby roma tomatoes, halved and sliced

1 ripe avocado, cubed

1/4 cup diced red onion

Place above ingredients in a bowl.

DRESSING

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

Put all dressing ingredients in a screw top jar, shake and pour over tomato and avocado, toss the salad to combine.

Pile salad into lettuce cups to serve.

And now the prawns, Steam a small quantity of rice, you only need about 1/4 cup cooked per person to soak up the juices, have rice ready on warmed platter.

Pour a tablespoon of oil and a good nob of butter into a non stick pan with the garlic, heating until the garlic is just softening, raise the heat and add the prawns, cooking them pretty quickly until they have just turned opaque, do not over cook or the prawns will toughen. Lift onto the bed of rice.

Pour a couple of tablespoons of the prawn stock into the pan, swirling around and lifting up the juices and brownings, then pour the sauce over the prawns and rice.

Served them with the avocado, tomato salad.

Would I do them again? probably, but they were expensive protein at $30 per kilo.......so what with the butter and the cost, I guess I failed on two fronts, but heck they were tasty, there were 5 prawns each, and that size we really only needed 3 each, but there is something rather nice about a decadent prawn feast.

Bacon and Egg Pies

Fast, Easy, Cheap and Tasty.
Took a day off yesterday, played and sewed and just generally lost track of time, imagine the shock of hearing the garage door open when I was sure it was only 3 o'clock..........and what was to be had for dinner?!?!.

Thankfully one of the things I had done was cruise through a Donna Hay cookbook, yep, another one, this time her modern classics book 1, where there was a rather interesting and easy looking recipe for bacon and egg pies on page 158.

Using frozen pastry, grated cheese mixed with mustard and of course bacon and eggs this was very quickly assembled and popped into the oven for 15 minutes while I scooted downstairs and harvested the lettuce leaves, spring onion and basil for the salad.

Popped them onto plates and topped them off with some of these goodies, Kumato grape tomatoes, darker skinned with a hint of black, they are a sweet and flavourful tiny tomato, not exactly budget but hey, a few go a long way and the same goes for Sardinian green olives and Persian Fetta.

Old fashioned and a budget beater, but tasty

Gosh, its been ages since I cooked some of these more old fashioned meals, first there was the meatloaf, then the leftover fritters and now for heavens sake Rissoles, not only rissoles, but gravy, dried peas and plain mashed potatoes.

The Darling does like dried peas, his Mum used to cook them, I have a tendency to burn the poor little blighters, in fact we lost a perfectly good coffee table after one effort.

The only concession to anything a little more up to date food wise is the caramelised sweet balsamic onions on top and no there isn't a recipe, just slice up as many red onions as you think you will need and then slice up a bit more.

Cook them slowly in a heavy based fry pan with a little olive oil and just a tad of butter until they are nicely caramelised, add a good splash of balsamic vinegar and let sit over a low heat for a few minutes. Rather yum if do say so myself.

Ohh and the coffee table? well the family was home for dinner and there was a tad of wine involved, so judgement was a little skewed, .......you understand.

So after filling the kitchen with burnt pea smoke, I removed gently, well o.k., chucked, the saucepan into the sink and filled the pan with water,

Mistake!

Big mistake!

The steam smelled worse than the smoke, so I slapped a lid on the pot and just left it to moulder.

Someone helpful came alone, smelled the burnt pea smell, and immediately knowing what I had done - past experience you know - and to be really helpful removed the saucepan to the back deck, where the only place to put the pan down was the coffee table, oh and did I mention that the top of the table was glass??

Someone helpful was barely back in the kitchen when there was this rather explosive bang, followed by the tinkling sound of glass raining down from the verandah to the concrete below.

DDIL was not happy, it was her Coffee Table.

Leftovers, what do you do with them?

We had meatloaf for dinner the night before last, its literally been years since I made a meatloaf, but the request had been made and as I'm on a bit of a budget kick the two tied in together. However, we had leftovers, even after sending a roast vegie and meatloaf lunch off with the Darling, we had leftovers, so what with the budget kick and my hating to waste food, something had to be done.
A quick net search and about the only thing that came up was either fritters or bung it in a can of soup and call it a.............well I've forgotten what it was called and it is probably a fine thing to do but just didn't seem to be up my alley, so I went with the fritter idea, there was a nice sounding potato fritter, not unlike roesti so I went with that. The only thing I would change is the size of the meatloaf chunks, as the potato cooked down the chunks became more of an accessory than an integral part of the fritter. The whole thing was surprisingly tasty and very easy, I topped the fritters with a fresh tomato and caramelised onion sauce and a sno pea salad.

Fritters for 3 serves

4 medium potatoes, grated and squeezed dry

1 medium onion, grated

1 egg

1 Tablespoon plain flour, approx

salt and pepper

leftover meatloaf, cubed, 1 to 1 1/2 cups small chunks

Olive oil

Grate the potatoes, and using you hands, take handfuls of the grated potato, squeeze the excess potato juice out over the sink and place dry grated potato into a large bowl.

Grate the onion, add to the bowl with the potato.

Add egg to the potato and mix together well.

Sprinkle the flour over the potato, just enough to pull the mixture together, Add the meatloaf chunks and season.

Heat a good coating of oil in a heavy based fry pan.

When pan and oil are hot, place 1/4 cup measures of the potato mixture into the pan, press down to flatten slightly.

Cook over low heat until fritters are well browned and crisp on both sides. The center of the fritters will be creamy when fully cooked.

You will need to use two pans if you are cooking a number of fritters or remove the first batch to the oven to keep warm and continue using the one pan.

When fritters are all done, place on serving plates, top with tomato sauce and the sno pea salad and Enjoy!

Caramelised Onion and Fresh Tomato Sauce

1 medium onion, finely sliced

2 large ripe tomatoes, seeded and chopped - I didn't bother peeling the tomatoes, I rather like the skin left on the chunks

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon stock or water.

Heat oil in saucepan and add onions, fry over a medium heat until the onions caramelise, turning a nice soft brown, don't allow the onions to catch and burn, they will go bitter.

Add the tomato chunks and stir through. Place lid on pan and allow to cook down, stirring occasionally.

Add a little stock or water if the sauce is becoming too thick or beginning to stick to the pan.

Sno Pea Salad for 3

150 - 200 grams sno peas,

1/4 red capsicum

1/4 green or yellow capsicum

1/3 long red chilli - more if you love chilli

1 tablespoon light soy sauce

1 tablespoon brown sugar

3/4 tablespoon lemon juice

Blanch the sno peas in boiling water for 1 min, drain and refresh under cold water.

Drain well and place in bowl

Very finely dice the red chilli, place in screw top jar with soy sauce, brown sugar and lemon juice, shake well and allow to sit for a few minutes.

Slice capsicums finely, add to sno peas and pour dressing over to serve.

Oven Semi-Dried Strawberries

That wonderful flavour of fresh picked strawberries is pretty hard to beat with its promise of spring days and fresh produce. When the opportunity presents I like to semi dry the berries in the oven to use them in cakes and salads. It is a simple process, and the net abounds with different methods and how to's but I just simply wash them, slice away the top and halve them, placing them onto a paper covered biscuit tray.
If I am planning on using them for cakes etc., I sprinkle just a little brown sugar over them and put them into a slow oven 130 degrees Celsius, for about 50 - 60 minutes.

If the plan is to use them in a Spinach and Strawberry salad, just pop them into a bowl, sprinkle a little brown sugar over with a splash of balsamic vinegar, turn them to coat and pop them out onto a baking paper lined tray and into the oven for the same time and temperature.

When sliced open, the halves are still full of moisture, the flavour is intensified and the dry surface helps them not to sink to the bottom of the cake mix.

They will keep for awhile in a jar in the fridge, how long I'm not sure as I use them pretty quickly, these will be made into muffins tomorrow.

Cumquats and Limes

Harvested the Cumquats and a few limes from our trees, and decided to have a go at preserving one of the limes.

No jar with a wide enough neck to take a whole lime so I quartered it and packed it with salt, then,following the advice on preserving lemons in Stephanie Alexanders book, I topped the jar with added lime juice. This is going to be a resounding success, and I will be serving lovely preserved limes with my Tagines. Or it will be a disaster and no one will ever hear about that poor little lime again.

An experiment in making Cumquat Syrup, these quarters will sit in the sugar and brandy for a day and then be popped into a pan of heavy syrup, simmered for a few minutes and be ready for use immediately to drizzle over a citrus cake.

Recipe for Cumquat Syrup

Weigh cumquats and measure out equal weight in sugar.

quarter cumquats, removing all seeds and mix with 1/3rd of the sugar, place in a jar to with a good slosh of brandy, about 1 - 2 Tablespoons. Cover and let stand for a day.

Place the 2/3 rd measure of sugar into a sauce pan (not aluminium) and with a very little water,

melt the sugar and bring to a simmer, add the cumquat quarters and syrup and simmer for approx 10 mins.

This will be the first time I have tried that old favourite, Brandied Cumquats, but I have enjoyed them in the past, it will be interesting to see if they are as good as I remember.