Cranberry Bread

The new Everyday Food arrived this week and thankfully there were lots of things in there to try. The first recipe that caught my eye was for Cranberry Bread, so I whipped some up this afternoon. It was really easy and it tastes great. The cranberries are really tart and it's delicious, with just enough sweetness from the cake part to counteract it.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus more for pan
2 cups flour
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon slat
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup milk
1 bag (12oz) cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and flour a 9x 5 inch loaf pan, 8 cup capacity, and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside in a medium bowl, combine butter egg and milk. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and whisk to combine. Fold in cranberries.

Pour better into prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in centre of loaf comes out clean, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Transfer pan to a wire rack; let bread cool 30 mins. Invert onto rack, then immediately turn right side up and let cool completely.

I also picked up a copy of Ina Garten's new book Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients, which Costco has for $18.89. Amazon has it for $21.00, so if you are near a Costco, it's a bargain!! I just had a quick look through and there are some lovely things in there.

Tomorrow of course is Halloween, so hopefully my kids will get lots of Milky Way's and I'll be able to help eat them!!

Black Bottom Cupcakes

I think it's important to talk about the tragedies as well as the triumphs, so I'm going to share my Black Bottom Cupcakes experience with you. This was the recipe that caught my eye more than once when I was thumbing through the Crazy About Cupcakes book, so I decided to try them today.

Firstly, I would like to mention that this is the strangest cake batter that I have ever made. Secondly, I would like to mention that they only turned out OK. Edible, but nothing to rave about. This could have something to do with the fact that I used Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers(I always have them on hand in case I need to whip up an ice box cake) which were too big for the cupcake , so I broke them up and lay them on the bottom of the cupcake paper. And I also used regular sized choc chips. Of course the bits of broken up cookie floated to the top when I put the batter in and didn't stay on the bottom like they were supposed to. I imagine that one of the cookie halves of an Oreo would have worked well for this recipe.

The batter was really runny. And in the recipe it calls it "chocolate batter" but there is no chocolate in it, except for the cookie. Weird. Oh, and I also used whipped cream cheese, because I didn't have a block of it.

Also the recipe calls for 24 cookies, so I thought it made 2 doz cupcakes. It doesn't. If you want to give these a try, just make 12 and use more batter in the 12, I think they would turn out better.

24 round chocolate cookies
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
One 8oz package cream cheese, at room temperature
1 large egg
1 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325F. Insert liners into a medium cupcake pan, or grease the pan.Place a chocolate cookie in the bottom of each liner or pan.

In a large bowl, cream together 1 cup of the sugar, the oil, and the water until blended. Stir in the vinegar and vanilla.

In a separate medium bowl mix together flour, baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt.

Add all the dry mixture to the wet mixture and beat until incorporated. Set Aside.

In a medium bowl, beat together the cream cheese, egg, and the remaining sugar and salt. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Fill cupcake liners or pan half full with the chocolate batter. Top with a heaping tablespoon of the cream cheese mixture. Bake for 25-30 mins or until the edges of the cupcakes are puffed but the centers look moist. Cool cupcakes in the pan.

Raspberry Cream Cheese Muffins

My latest thing before buying new recipe books that look good on Amazon, is to borrow them from my library. Luckily I have a fantastic local library, so I'm able to do this for almost any cookbook. I recently borrowed "More from Magnolia" Recipes from the World-Famous Bakery. I'm sort of disappointed with the book because there are hardly any pictures in it!! I have to have pictures!! More often than not that is what inspires me to make the dish or the cake or cookies. I think that's why I love Ina so much, she has photos of 99% of her recipes. I thought most of the the stuff was sort of ordinary, and without pictures to inspire me I didn't think I was going to make anything, until the Raspberry Cream Cheese Breakfast Buns caught my eye.

I thought they turned out well. The original recipe is for 9 large muffins, but I just made them in the size of regular muffins, because I know no one would eat a whole large muffin. The recipe made 2 dozen regular muffins.

1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
8oz package cream cheese, softened
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping

1/2 cup raspberry preserves

Confectioner's sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and lightly flour 9 large muffin cups or 24 regular muffins. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat together the cream cheese, butter and sugar until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the dry ingredients in two parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling them about two-thirds full. Drop 3 small dollops (about a teaspoonful each) of raspberry preserves onto the top of each bun and, using the tip of a sharp knife, swirl the preserves into the batter, forming a decorative pattern.

Bake for 25-30 minutes (regular muffins - 22 mins), or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the bun comes out clean.

Allow the buns to cool for about 30 minutes before sprinkling with confectioners sugar and serving.

I also think these would probably be delicious with a slight touch of lemon, and I'm going to add some next time I make them, to see how it turns out.

Blogging Funk

I think I'm over my blogging funk. It's been such a whirlwind lately, I haven't done any menu planning, or made anything even slightly interesting at all, until this weekend.

Last weekend I had another birthday - my daughter turned six, I made the fairy cupcakes and decorated them with pale "fairy pink" icing and some lovely multi-coloured Cachous that my mother brought me from Australia.

I made 72 cupcakes one night, because I had to have enough for the party and then enough for her whole class the next day and some left-overs for us.





Fairy Cakes - makes 12 (obviously I made lots of batches!)

½ cup unsalted butter, softened
7 tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs
¾ cup self-rising flour
½ teaspoon vanilla extract ( I used 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract to make them very vanilla) 2-3 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 400F

Put all ingredients except milk in the food processor, and process until smooth. Pulse while adding milk down the funnel, to make a soft dropping consistency.

Spoon mixture into cupcake papers and try to fill each cup equally.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the fairy cakes are cooked and golden on top.

Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

For the icing I just used powdered sugar and water. I used about 2 cups powdered sugar and then added water gradually until I got the right consistency to ice with. I coloured it with a tiny dot of the pink concentrated colour

Wii Anyone?

My son turned eight last week, and he's obsessed with playing the Wii and he requested a birthday cake in the shape of a Wii, and we finally settled on a cake like a Wii Remote.

I just made a simple chocolate rolled cake (here is the recipe) and then I used a Wilton Buttercream Frosting mixture because I wanted a really good consistency to work with on the rolled cake. The icing was actually delicious, I wasn't expecting it to be at all. And then I coloured some icing blue and used that for the accents.

He loved it and I think it is actually recognisable as a Wii Remote

Weekend Cooking

This weekend I've made a few things but nothing new. I made Nana's Sponge Cake again, but this time I divided the batter into three 8" pans, because I wanted to see how a tripple layer worked. If you want to make this in 3 layers it only takes about 13-15 mins to cook.

It was sort of a waste of time to do the three layers because it didn't really make it better, only more lopsided - so next time I'm sticking with the two layers. Here's a bad photo:



All the raspberries and cream were slipping off the other side of the cake. It still tasted good. I think I was in a total funk putting the cake together because I had just learned about the demise of Tastespotting.

I also made these chocolate chip cookies for Marc for Fathers Day, and I put together a French Onion Dip from Ina.


It doesn't look much in this picture, but it is really delicious. I usually make and just fry up the onions inside, but this time I used the side burner on the grill and did them in a cast iron skillet and it added a lot of flavour and as a bonus didn't stink up the house.

2 large yellow onions
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise

Cut up the onions in slices and then halve them, or however you want really - I don't think it makes a difference . Heat the the butter and the oil in a large saute pan on medium heat. Add the onions, cayenne, salt and pepper and saute for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 20 more minutes, until the onions are browned and caramelized. Allow to cool.

Place cream cheese, mayonnaise and sour cream in the bowl of an electric mixer, with the paddle attachment, and beat until smooth, add the onions and mix well.

This makes a TON of dip. You would have to have 50 people over to eat all this in one session, so I sometimes halve the recipe and it's about the right amount to snack on before dinner.

10th Anniversary Cake

Today is our 10th Wedding Anniversary and I was surprised with a lovely pair of diamond earrings!! I couldn't have been more shocked. So I was really pleased that I promised to make Marc a Devils Food Cake for our anniversary.

I used a recipe from Martha Stewart Holiday Halloween 2007 and it turned out really well. Much better than the last time I did one of these cakes from Martha.

It's your typical Martha recipe, you have to use your mixer, two bowls and a saucepan, but it is worth it, because the cake is really moist and chocolaty and the icing is fantastic.

The recipe calls for two 8" cake pans, but you could even put it in three pans, there is so much batter it fill the pans right to the top.

Here is the recipe. I didn't alter it one bit for my first try, and it really doesn't need any tweaking. This cake will probably become the standard birthday cake that I make from now on. It's that good!

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake....

....which also has sour cream chocolate icing. This is a cake from Nigella's Domestic Goddess, and I've made it a couple of times before with great success. It's actually two 8" rounds with the frosting in between as well as on the top and sides. I serve it with raspberries, which are quite magnificent at the moment.

Butter two 8-inch cake pans, and line with parchment or wax paper.

CAKE:

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons soft unsalted butter
3 tablespoons best cocoa
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons sour cream
2 large eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

ICING:

3oz milk chocolate
3oz bittersweet chocolate
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
2 cups confections’ sugar, sifted
½ teaspoon hot water

Pre heat the oven to 350F.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Then using and electric mixer, add the butter. In a wide-mouthed measuring cup, whisk together the cocoa, sour cream, eggs and vanilla, then slowly add this cocoa mixture to the ingredients in the bowl, beating until thoroughly mixed.

Pour the batter in the prepared pans and bake for 30 minutes; when they’re ready the cakes should be starting to shrink back form the edges of the tins. Leave for 10 minutes n their pans on racks, then turn out to cool.

To make the icing, melt the chocolate and butter in a microwave, or in a bowl over hot water. Let cool a little, then stir in the sour cream, vanilla, and syrup. Add the sifted confectioners’ sugar and a little hot water, blending until smooth. When you’ve got the texture right – thick enough to cover but supple enough to spread, adding more sugar or water as required – you can ice the cakes.

Cut four strips of baking parchment and make and outline of a square with them on a flat plate. Sit one layer on top of the paper pieces, spread with icing, sit the second layer on top and used the rest of the icing to cover the top and sides.

Orange Pound Cake

Apparently I've become obsessed with orange cake after the last try from the retro recipe box. I decided to try Ina's version (from Barefoot Contessa Family Style) this weekend and see how it turned out. I also happened to have half a bag of oranges and I like to use my juicer attachment on the kitchen aid.

I liked how it turned out - it was a lot more moist than the Orange Velvet Cake, but I still wasn't really sold. The orange is nice, but it's just not as good as a lemon flavour, in my opinion. The bittersweet chocolate buttons that I used on the top gave it a nice lift!!

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has a fantastic orange cake recipe that they would like to share!


½ pound unsalted butter (2 sticks)
2 ½ cups granulated sugar - divided
4 extra-large eggs (at room temperature)
1/3 cup grated orange zest (6 oranges)
3 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
¾ cup freshly squeezed orange juice - divided
¾ cup buttermilk at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Glaze
1 cups confectioners' sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice


Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Grease two 8 ½ x 4 ½ x 2 ½ -inch loaf pans. Cream the butter and 2 cups granulated sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for about 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. With the mixer on medium speed, add the eggs, one at a time, and the orange zest.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl. In another bowl, combine ¼ cup orange juice, the buttermilk and vanilla. Add the flour and buttermilk mixtures alternately to the batter, beginning and ending with the flour. Divide the batter evenly between the pans, smooth the tops, and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until a cake tester comes out clean.

Combine ½ cup granulated sugar with ½ cup orange juice in a small saucepan and cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves and makes a syrup. When the cakes are done, let them cool for 10 minutes, then invert them onto a rack set over a tray, and spoon the orange syrup over the cakes. Allow the cakes to cool completely.

For the glaze, combine the confectioners' sugar and orange juice in a bowl, mixing with a wire whisk until smooth. Pour over the top of the cakes and allow the glaze to drizzle down the sides.

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.

Brown Bananas

And along with the Whopper Cookies, I threw together a Banana Cake this afternoon. I was on a roll! I'm totally convinced my family lets the bananas get over ripe so I will be forced into making a banana cake. I'm wising up to their tricks.

Nana's Sponge Cake

I used my Nana's recipe to make this sponge. She was great at making sponge cake. She never learned to drive a car, but she could whip one of these up no problem.

I came across the recipe for the sponge when I was going through my mothers old recipe cards that she used to use all the time. The delights of entertaining in the 60's and 70's is a whole other post, which I will delight you with next!

So there it is! The simplest recipe in the world!

4 eggs

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of self rising flour

Grease and flour two 8" round pans. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Beat the eggs on High until light and fluffy.(I also added 1 teaspoon of vanilla at this stage) I used the paddle attachment on my mixer and put it on speed 8 until air bubbles formed around the edges of egg mixture. Add the sugar gradually. Then fold in the flour. I put the mixer on speed 2 for this and it only took a few seconds to fold in the flour. Bake at 350F for 25 mins.

I used Trader Joe's Raspberry Preserves between the cake layers and whipped up some cream with 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. I sprinkled the top of the cake with confectioners sugar.

Butterfly Cupcakes

Today is my 5yr old's Daisy Girl Scout Valentines Party and I offered to bring the cupcakes. I made these with my Vanilla Fairy Cakes recipe and then cut the tops off flat and halved the tops and dusted with confectioners sugar. I iced the cupcake and then placed the halves on top like wings.

This is a very Australian way to do cupcakes. The more traditional method is to cut a bit from the top of the cup cake and fill it with strawberry jam and then top with some whipped cream and put the "wings" on top of the cream and dust the whole thing with confectioners sugar. I jused to love that when I was a kid, but I find lots of kids don't like the strawberry jam, so I did it the quicker way with regular icing (confectioners sugar, water, one drop of food colouring).

Don't they just look like litte butterflys from the top?

Cappuccino Cupcakes

These little mouthfuls of joy are from Nigella's Domestic Goddess and are SO easy.They are a coffee sponge cake with a white chocolate icing and a dusting of cocoa powder. You just throw everything into a food processor and then drop the mixture into the cupcake tray and bake for 20 minutes. I also love them, because I love things with a coffee flavour, and don't they just look like little mini cappuccinos?


Cupcakes:

3/4 cup self-rising cake flour
1/2 cup soft unsalted butter (1 stick)
7 tablespoons of sugar (I actually used 8 after testing the batter)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 heaped tablespoon instant espresso
2-3 tablespoons milk (I used 3 for the right consistency)

Icing

5 1/2 Ounces white chocolate (Bakers brand is really good)
1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick)
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sour cream
1 2/3 cups confections sugar, sifted scant teaspoon cocoa powder**

** just means slightly less than a teaspoon.

Preheat oven to 400F

Put all the cupcake ingredients except for the milk into the food processor and blitz to combine. Pulse again, adding milk down the funnel to form a batter with a soft dropping consistency. Spoon into the baking cups in their pan and then cook for about 20 minutes. When done, leave in the pan to cool for 5 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack.

When the cupcakes are completely cold, make the icing. Melt the chocolate ad butter in the microwave or a double boiler, and after it cooled a little, stir in the sour cream. Gradually bet in the sifted confections' sugar. If the consistency isn't right or the icing, add either hot water to thin or more sifted sugar to thicken. spread roughly and generously over the top of each cupcake, and then dust sparingly with cocoa, but pressing a little through a small sieve, so that they look like little cups of cappuccino.

Makes 12.

The Devil is in the Details!

Disaster!!!! I made this Devil's Food Cake today, which I saw Martha make on a re-run over the holidays. It looked so easy! And so delicious! And so impressive!

Not. Don't know yet. And not.

I did all the prep. With Martha recipes it's always very important to prep exactly as the recipe states otherwise you are going to get to somewhere in the middle of the instructions and want to plunge a serrated knife into your heart.

This cake is supposed to be 3 eight inch layers, but I only have 2 eight inch pans and 1 ten inch pan, (you can already see where this is going), I made it in the three pans I have with clever plans to cut the 10" one down to size when it had cooled. As you can see by the two layered cake in the picture, the cutting down didn't go that well. The kids are eating that "layer" after dinner tonight.

Then the frosting. 1 quart of heavy cream, 24oz of semi-sweet chocolate chips - cook over medium high heat for 30 minutes until thickend. 45 mins later, still not thickened enough. So I thought that it would probably stiffen up in the fridge while it cooled down, also you add 1 teaspoon of light corn syrup. I couldn't be more wrong. Runny, runny, runny.

Anyway, I assembled the cake, the top cracked, I iced it anyway and I'm going to eat some after dinner while I watch the finale of the Amazing Race. I'll update on the taste later.

Here is the recipe if you want to give it a try. I'd love to know if anyone has success with the frosting!

UPDATE: It's OK. I'm not blown away by the taste - although I think if I'd gotten the icing to really thicken up it would have made a huge difference.

Vanilla Fairy Cakes

I adapted these vanilla fairy cakes from Nigella's basic Fairy cake recipe from Domestic Goddess. They are very easy to make and are delicious! I also doubled the recipe to make 24.

½ cup unsalted butter, softened
7 tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs
¾ cup self-rising flour
½ teaspoon vanilla extract ( I used 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract to make them very vanilla) 2-3 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 400F

Put all ingredients except milk in the food processor, and process until smooth. Pulse while adding milk down the funnel, to make a soft dropping consistency.

Spoon mixture into cupcake papers and try to fill each cup equally.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the fairy cakes are cooked and golden on top.

Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

Mrs Names is having a tailgate party in her driveway today for the big Redskins/Cowboys game. She's a diehard Redskins fan and her husband feels the same way about the cowboys.

The icing is confectioners sugar, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and then water for the right consistency. I used the Wilton concenrate food colourings. It was really difficult to get the right colour for the Redskins, I used a lot of food colour and it's still not exactly how I wanted it, but it's close enough!

Banana Cake

I make this banana cake a lot. It's a totally mixed recipe, partly my Grandmothers, partly Southern Living and partly came about because of a mistake I made one time, leaving an ingredient out, and it worked well, made it better really, so I kept making it the "new" way every time after that.

Ingredients

3 - 5 over ripe bananas
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Whip the banana's for about 5 minutes. Then add eggs and vanilla

Combine next five dry ingredients in a bowl, then add to the banana mixture.

Pour the batter in a greased and floured pan. Any size will do. This mixture will also fit nicely into 2 loaf pans.

Bake at 350 F for 40 minutes, and then check with a clean dry knife. If it comes out clean it's done. If not give it another 10 minutes and check again.

Icing:

I use a coffee flavoured icing for this cake. It might sound wierd, but it's really delicious.

1 cup of confectioners sugar
Drizzel in some coffee a little at a time and mix until you have the consistency you want, and then ice the cake!