Surprisingly good sponge!

I am not sure what prompted it but I recently became interested in trying to cook a sponge cake. Recipes like this one spark memories of learning to cook in my Intermediate School cooking classes. (equivalent of year 5-6 although we had a school that taught these years separate to primary and high school) In class we were taught several different methods for cooking eggs, we started with poaching and moved onto lemon meringue pie, queen cakes and souffles. I must look up my old reports to see who my teacher was and how i was graded (I bet I'll find a comment on how I talked too much or was easily distracted!) I found this sponge recipe on the internet and doubled it to make the enormous stake pictured. The kids enjoyed triple sifting the cornflour not to mentiondevouring the one i made for Vito's birthday. The are eating it like cats or dogs (one of there favorite pass times) because it was too big a piece for them to pick up. However i must find an alternative to the whipped cream, while tasting so good at 45% fat it has got to be bad, bad, bad!!!

Ingredients

2 eggs, separated 
½ cup cornflour 
⅓ cup caster sugar 
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda 
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Beat the whites until stiff then slowly add the sugar.

Add the yolks and beat well.

Sift the cornflour, bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar together 3 times.

Fold into the mixture with a metal spoon.

Pour into a greased 20 cm pan and cook for 20 minutes.

Recipe notes

For a chocolate sponge, add 1 and half tablespoons of cocoa to the cornflour mix. Alternati

vely use a gluten free cornflour. The sponge will still rise perfectly every time.

amaretto biscuits

Happy new year and apologies for the lack of posting. I am not much of a christmas cook but to make up for my idleness i wanted to share one of the highlights of christmas this year. Aside from the amazing turkey with a delicious stuffing prepared by brother in law Anthony my lovely sister in law Rita baked these Amaretto biscuits. They were bellissimo! This recipe calls for both bitter and sweet almonds, but if you can't find bitter almonds, just substitute the sweet ones

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups sweet almonds

1/2 cup bitter almonds

1 cup super fine sugar

2 egg whites

1/2 tsp almond extract

If you buy almonds with skin, you'll have to take this first step - otherwise, skip ahead.Preheat your oven to about 300 degrees. Bring a small pan of water to a boil, and drop the almonds in for about 1.5 - 2 minutes. Then drain out the water, and rub the almonds in a dry cloth to remove the skins. Then spread them on a baking tray and put them in the heated oven for about 10 - 12 minutes (without letting them brown). Remove them from theoven and allow them to cool. When they are cool, grind them up in a food processor, combining with about half of the sugar. With a beater (or stand mixer), whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks (when you lift your whisk out a point forms and then falls over). Then sprinkle half of the remaining sugar over the whites and keep beating them until stiff peaks form (when you lift your whisk out a peak stands and stays up). With a spatula, gently fold in the remaining sugar, being careful not to over-work the whites. Spoon the almond mixture into a pastry bag that you have fitted with a round/smooth tip. Prepare a baking sheet by covering it with a sheet of parchment paper. Dust it with flour. Let out all the air in the pastry bag, and with a firm squeeze, pipe out the mixture into small rounds about the size of a walnut. Let stand for about 2 hours.Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Bake the amaretti for about 15 minutes or until they turn light gold. Remove from the oven and let cool. When they are cool, you can store them in an air-tight container, or serve them right away with a cup of steaming espresso. Buon appetito!

strawberry jam

I made strawberry jam last monday and it created such a heavenly smell i wished i had been able to capture the aroma with a smell cam and shared it on this blog.

The strawberries themselves weren't anything special they were a bargin @ 89c a punnet and just right for making jam, and as some of you might know i can't resist a bargain so i dived in without planning ahead.

I bought them at Preston market on the Friday intending to make jam over the weekend but along with attending dance performances and musicals (of the Poppins variety) I managed to get side tracked along the way. Surprisingly after spending a few days in the fridge i was pleased to find that the punnets held up well, there were only a few casualties and after washing and picking over I had an easy kilo to work with. I prefer to use a smaller firm fruit rather than the big fleshy ones - save them for dipping in chocolate, a real crowd pleaser (mmmmmm thanks Caz!). When buying i check to see that the fruit has good colour, not too over ripe and that there isn't any condensation inside the containers (a sign they have been picked wet) and no mush or mold showing through on the underside.

I checked out a few recipes online but returned to an old faithful recipe which is a kilo of berries for a kilo of sugar with the juice of one lemon thrown in. I would love to find jam recipes that uses less sugar but i am not so keen on runny jams, especially strawberry (although i would love to hear from anyone who can recommend one. I think apricots can work quite well with less sugar if they are a firm fruit.)

Other recipes suggested soaking the berries in sugar for a couple of hours before cooking or only boiling the fruit and sugar for 12 minutes as the berries were said to spoil.

However i kept it simple - I mixed the fruit and sugar together in a big pot, with the lemon juice and gently warmed the mixture through stirring it till the sugar dissolved. Once the sugar had dissolved I turned up the gas and brought it to a quick boil and kept the mixture rolling along on a steady boil for about 25mins. I tested it by coating the back of a wooden spoon and dripping a small amount onto a saucer to check the viscosity. You can add butter just before bottling but i didn't bother. I think this helps with removing the bubbles from the top of the jam but as you can see i don't tend to bother.

check out the colour!! (OMG it looks a bit like I just killed someone!)

parsley pesto

Its that time of the year again when we have an abundance of flat leaf parsley in the garden and while i let some of it go to seed to allow for next years crop I have been filling in some spare moments by making pesto with the rest. Pesto pasta is a form of comfort food in our house, it's one of the green foods that doesn't involve coercion or other forms of negotiation with non compliant minors.

I would normally add parsley to a basil pesto, its seems to alleviate the bitterness that can occur when chopping basil with a steel food processor blade (not the correct way but the quick way). Using the processor allows me to make pesto in bulk (literally bucket loads) and easily vary the consistency according to preference (chunky or smooth). I add it to vegie or meat sauces, mayo to dress coleslaw, lasagna, or spread it onto pizza bases. Recently I made some potato and spinach gnocchi and dressed it with parsley pesto which was feast of green! (that nobody complained about, much...)

3 cups of chopped parsley

1 cup of cashews ( i buy the broken ones much more affordable than pine nuts)

2/3 extra virgin olive oil

1-2 gloves of garlic

1 cup grated parmesan

pinch of salt

Process according to preference. Store in sealed containers in the fridge for a week (longer if you pour more oil over the top) or freeze. When adding to pasta retain some of the cooking water and/or add some olive oil to encourage good coverage.

Birthday girl

Well the birthday girl got her cake and she ate it too. I was surprised how significant turning six was,

for me rather than for M. It feels like its gettin

g serious and I don't just mean the party. She's a big girl and filled with ideas and attitudes which i tried for a couple of weeks in September to channel into party preparations and she did quite well.

She painted a donkey (outline supplied by V), helped make and paint the pinjate(sp?), wrapped the pass the parcel and iced the cake. The party planning was mostly driven by her and each morning

she would prepare me with "now you'll do such and such for the p

arty today won't you mum, or you'll buy......"

Prep parties seem to be quite important milestone and for weeks M was making lists and telling me who she was or wasn't going to invite but I put a cap on it and decided to limit it to girls from her school. I was pleasantly surprised to find them also filled with id

eas and attitudes, luckily i had a party plan!! P.S actual party cake was tri-coloured which i managed to over cook not that they cared they seem to only ever like eating the icing.

Little m thought it rocked as well!!

Homemade Mayonnaise

It was mentioned to me recently that we only cook two recipes from any one cookbook, which sounds ridiculous when i think about how many books i have but perhaps it's not far from my truth. I have been meaning to post this recipe for Mayo for some time, as it is one I always return to. It's taken from my tatty old Moosewood cookbook a wholesome whole foods delight i bought (?maybe it was a present?) sometime back in the 80's (yes the good old days) and I haven't gone near supermarket mayonnaise since. I tend to make it when eggs are plenty and with the onset of spring i am pleased to report that my girls are laying well. The three chicks we raised from the creche hatching have all turned out to be ladies (although not laying yet it looks like it will be any day now), so we have seven chickens in total. When out on my walks along the Merri Creek I pick them a bunch of greens so that when i let them out to free range they tend to by pass my vegies. I have some garden beds fenced off but none the less they still get in and their scratching around can cause enough damage to make me twitchy. So watch out ladies if you don't prove you can earn your keep.....

Mayonnaise makes 3.5 cups

1/2 cup vinegar (or part or all lemon or lime juice)

1 tsp honey

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp tamari

2 whole eggs

2 egg yolks

Beat together in a blender (eggs should be at room temp)

Gradually drizzle in while blender is still running

2.2 cups of oil (I have used extra virgin olive oil in the past but i find its flavour too strong, so i either mix it with another oil such as rice bran or just do rice bran or whatever i have avail.)

The mayonnaise will thicken as the oil is drizzled in. As soon as it thickens stop or it will thin again.

You can add pesto parsley ( I will post about this soon) or garlic to make aioli or thin it down with a little milk to cover a coleslaw.

chocolate cake

Mariana is very excited as she turns 6 at the end of the month and she asked me if i could make her a practice birthday cake. This is a simple oldy but a goody chocolate cake recipe and as you can see it satisfied the demand!

125gm butter

175gm sugar

2 tlbsp. golden syrup or honey or omit

1 egg

1 .5 cup flour

2tblsp cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup milk

1 tsp baking powder

cream butter and sugar

add egg and golden syrup and mix

sift in flour, bp and cocoa and add alternatively with baking soda mixed in with milk

line a cake tin with baking paper

bake at 180 or slightly lower if using fan oven for 1hr. keep an eye on it and it the top is cooking to fast cover with tin foil

ice with chocolate icing and serve with lashings of cream!!