New Challenges

And having just said this about Martha and Everyday Food, my new challenge to myself for next weeks dinners is, choose one of the Everyday Magazines that I have and make every dinner for a week that they suggest in one of their "week of dinners" sections. I haven't chosen it yet, but I'll post the whole menu when I do.

Tonight we are having the Garlic and Parmesan Turkey Burgers!

Disappointed

The July/August 2008 is the most disappointing edition of Everyday Food Magazine ever. I'm usually marking off every second page when I get my magazine, and and I always try at least two or three things out straight away. This time... nothing. Not one thing in here looks even remotely appealing to me, or it's a rehash or twist on a recipe that I've already tried. I'd love to hear if anyone else feels the same about this one, or it's just me.

Retro Recipe Box - Orange Velvet Cake

I whipped up another one from the retro Recipe Box this afternoon. It's a Orange Velvet Cake. My mother assures me it's delicious and has been bugging me to make it (truth: asked me nicely once in an email)

It turned out really nicely. I thought the batter was a bit thick and strange when I made it, but it cooked up well.



This picture with the green icing is a bit off putting, but that's the 70's for you.

Here's the recipe:

6oz butter (stick and a half)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon grated orange rind
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon orange juice (I just squeezed the juice of one orange and used that)
2 1/4 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder.

Cream butter with sugar and orange rind. Add eggs, one at a time, then orange juice; beat well. fold in sifted flour and baking powder alternately with the milk. Fill into buttered loaf pan, bake at 350F for 45 mins.

Allow to stand in pan 10 mins than turn out on to a cooling rack.

I put all the batter into one loaf pan,and it came nearly to the top and the cake rose up quite high, but you could get two cakes out of it, but they would not be as high.

Icing.

I made a chocolate icing for this cake, but the original recipe called for a butter icing made with 2oz of butter and then add confections sugar and beating until the right consistency for spreading. This is slightly vague for me, so I did the chocolate one this way:

1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 cup less 1 tablespoon of confectioners sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons water

And then you could also do an orange flavoured glaze or lemon flavoured glaze:

1 cup confections sugar sifted
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice or lemon juice.

We had the cake after dinner and it was a bit crumbly for my liking, but the flavour was excellent. Next time I'd probably put in a little bit more milk and a little more orange juice to moisten it up a bit.

Coconut Slice

As promised I made the Coconut Slice from the recipe box. I pretty much stuck to what was on the recipe card, and it turned out, but next time I would make a couple of drastic changes. I'm going give you the recipe as is (along with my little tweak) and then I'm going to give you the recipe for how you could do it next time. If anyone can improve on this - I'd love to hear about it!!

Original recipe:

1 cup coconut
1 tablespoon confectioners sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 oz butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup self rising flour
1/8 teaspoon salt.
6 oz dark chocolate (I actually used Bakers Semi-sweet)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Soak coconut with icing sugar and milk. Meanwhile, cream butter and brown sugar, add egg, beat well. Fold in sifted flour and salt. Spread mixture into greased pan (I used 8 x 10). Spread coconut filling over the top. Bake at 350 F for 25 mins. Let Cool completely.

When cooled, melt chocolate and vegetable oil together. Mix well. Let cool slightly and then spread the chocolate over the coconut and then refrigerate until the chocolate has completely hardened, then you can cut it into squares.

New recipe:

2 cups of coconut
2 tablespoons of confectioners sugar
1/4 cup of milk.
1 oz of butter
1/8 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup of self - rising flour
pinch of salt.
6oz dark chocolate (I actually used Bakers Semi-sweet)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil.

Same method as above.

So this is actually going to give a much thinner layer of the cakey base, more coconut and the same amount of chocolate, and I think will make it much more delicious than it already is!!

My husband thinks that I should have made it with a graham cracker crust. All Americans are obsessed with graham cracker crust and I don't think it's the answer for everything. The cakey base is what makes this slice quite unique.

My Deviled Egg Boat is Sinking

As promised I'm going to share some of the fab recipes I found in the recipe box. Mmmmmmm, don't these all look enticing?

My personal favourite is the Deviled Egg Boats. Why on earth would you need to put the egg on a slice of toast? All these recipes are pre 1972 because they are in imperial measurements and in Australia we switched over to metric that year. I think that these recipes also look incredibly unappetising because of the photography and their reproduction on cheap magazine paper.

The recipe for the Deviled Egg Boats is 6 hard boiled eggs, 6 slices of bread, 80z of processed cheese shredded, 1/2 cup milk, 3 tablespoons mayo, 1/2 teaspoon mustard, 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Once you've filled the eggs and toasted the bread "boats" , you have to make some kind of sauce with the milk and the processed cheese. Yum.

And I won't even go into the ingredients for the Layered Salmon Casserole, but if anyone is interested, please email me and I'll be happy to pass it along.

I did find one recipe for Coconut Slice which has a lot of promise. I'm going to make it with a few tweaks and then I'll post it.

Overly Ambitious?

I just got out my folder where I stash all the recipes that I take out of the newspaper or magazines, all the ones that I'm "definitely" going to try. hahahah. I'm never going to make even half of these, so I went through them this morning and most of the time I couldn't even remember why I cut out the page or kept the newspaper, so I just ditched all those, and the 10 almost identical recipes for some combination of lemon/blueberry muffins. Never even made one of those. I did keep one recipe for the muffins, and I'm going to make them today, although I only have raspberries not blueberries, so we'll see how they turn out

Unfortunately, I didn't even find a little bit of inspiration in all those lose papers flying around. I'm still stuck in the slump!!

My Own Bolognaise Recipe

As you know, last night was Halloween, so I decided to do something easy that I could pepare earlier in the afternoon and then get cleaned up quickly so the Trick or Treating could start. I made my own recipe Spaghetti Bolognaise. I have been using this one for over 20 years, and some days are better than others, but it is consistently yummy.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons Olive Oil
1lb ground beef - as fat free as possible
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic chopped or 1 teaspoon of preminced garlic in the jar
1 can of diced tomatoes
Couple slurps of ketchup
1 lb of white mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup red wine (optional)
Dried oregano
Fresh or dried basil, 1 tspn each
Salt
Pepper
Shaved fresh parmesan cheese for topping

Spaghetti or any pasta!

Rough chop the onion and garlic. Heat the oil in a saucepan, when hot add the onion and garlic, stirring until brown.

Add the ground beef and stir until all browned, turn down the heat to medium.
Add the can tomatoes, including all the juice.
Put in the few slurps of ketchup, add the wine, then the sliced mushrooms.
Add 1 tspoon dried oregano.
If using fresh basil wait until 5 mins before serving to add, if dried basil, add it now.
Simmer for about 45mins to 1 hour

Serve over spaghetti.

This sauce also freezes realy well, and this makes enough for 2 meals for 2 people.