Masterchef Live – in pictures
Published 9 October 2011Don’t tell Reality Raver, but I haven’t watched a whole lot of this season of Masterchef.
But I sneaked into the first day of Masterchef Live in Sydney on Friday afternoon. Which, because we didn’t sit around for any demos by Masterchef celebs, was just a glorified version of the food pavilion at the Easter Show.
I did manage to spoilt my tea by eating (and drinking) lots of samples.
Did anyone else go see Masterchef Live??
My favourite step in cake baking
Published 14 August 2011This week I have made two batches of Julie Goodwin‘s chocolate cake, for a handful of reasons:
- I hadn’t baked in over six weeks, since taking my convection microwave in for warranty repairs (and when I baked the first batch, on Wednesday night, the microwave was still in for warranty repairs). Even though I dislike baking in our bog-standard oven, I sucked it up and baked anyway (thus proving how much I needed chocolate cake)
- I needed something to post about on That’s Noice
- When we got a replacement convection microwave at the end of the week, I needed to bake something familiar to test the new microwave.
Sadly, the replacement microwave has failed its test (and my ongoing hatred of dealing with Sharp customer “service” will continue this week).
BUT I did make a fabulous chocolate cake (which I will need to be eating when dealing with Sharp’s customer “service” representatives).
My post about the cake will be on That’s Noice in the next week or so, but I can’t help but show you my favourite step when baking a cake. Well, apart from the bit where I get to lick the bowl…
This is the step after creaming the butter and sugar, after adding the eggs (and beating well after each addition) and just as I’m adding the flour and milk:
I just LOVE the texture just as the flour and milk is being added. And this texture doesn’t last long, it turns into proper cake batter once you stir the mixture together properly.
Hopefully the chocolate cake will give the me the strength I need when I go postal on Sharp tomorrow morning and demand a refund … wish me luck!
Bake swap: Mint Slice cake
Published 29 May 2011My friend Nykke lives about 90km away, but we share our baking efforts without even seeing each other regularly.
Our husbands work for the same company and they regularly take on the arduous task of ‘cake-mule’, lugging our treats on buses and trains, just for us (how good is it having husbands?!).
So Nykke and her fam are getting a huge chunk of this tomorrow night – Mint Slice cake.
I first tried this a few weeks ago – but in cupcake form – and loved the choc mint combo (who doesn’t? It’s fab). This is actually my trial cake in preparation for Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea fundraiser that I’m hosting on Wednesday.
A good baker is a prepared baker, no? And I’m so glad I did this test run – hopefully there’ll be less swearing on Tuesday night when I’m making the presentation version!
The concept is based on Steph’s fabulous Mint Slice cake, but I used a different cake recipe because I didn’t have access to Dutch cocoa. I actually used Julie Goodwin‘s mother-in-law’s choc cake recipe. Noice. Then made buttercream icing with peppermint essence. Then added chocolate ganache on top.
Apart from using a smaller cake pan next time (and making two cakes), I’ll work on creating a more obvious “dome” with the buttercream icing to better mimic the actual mint slice. See the way Steph did it?
Who needs dinner when you’ve got Mint Slice cake?
Contende Cook Book + my first ever Rocky Road
Published 2 January 2011Anyone who’s driven north over Gladesville Bridge in Sydney has seen St Joseph’s College in Hunters’ Hill – it’s kinda hard to miss the sandstone buildings amongst the greenery.
The parents of Joey’s released a cook book earlier this year – Contende – to raise funds for the school. When I was told about it, I was expecting a little photocopied number with typos and the dreaded comic sans font.
How wrong I was:
It’s full of photos, recipes and stories from the parents of current and ex-students. It’s stunning. No wonder it took two years to put together.
No wonder it cost me $45.
It’s sadly sold out, but the word according to my peeps is that the parents are planning another book. Expect it some time in 2012.
The reason Contende’s getting a mention?
It was the only cook book in my house to have a recipe for Rocky Road.
Does that seem strange to you?
Maybe Rocky Road is above Margaret Fulton, Stephanie Alexander, Bill Granger, the ladies from the AWW Test Kitchen and the authors of all the other cook books we own.
Hurrah for Contende!
My plan for the Rocky Road was to make it as Christmas gifts for friends and colleagues – an idea courtesy of CSR’s Bake a Difference campaign.
Even though I had Contende and The Interwebs as references, I learned that you can just chuck in whatever takes your fancy: marshmallow, nuts, coconut, shortbread, snakes, frogs… whatever!
Just as long as there’s chocolate:
And it’s so easy if you use a big Pyrex jug to melt the chocolate (dark, milk or white — whatever takes your fancy) and then chuck the dry ingredients in.
Sidenote: why have I never melted chocolate in the microwave before?! Never again will I waste my efforts on melting the damn stuff on the stove!!
Mix, spread in a baking tray (I prefer to line the tray with cling wrap rather than foil), pop in the fridge for 2+ hours and it’s ready for chopping:
For the Christmas pressies, I bundled up some of each of the three flavours in cellophane and stuck the ingredients to a gift card:
I added some curling ribbon and kept them in the fridge until gift delivery. Noice!
Unfortunately, a colleague decided to do exactly the same thing, so my luffly work friends got two lots of Rocky Road for Christmas.
I’ve got 12 months to come up with a new option :)
My own biscuits!
Published 30 December 2010How awesome is (only one part of) my Christmas present from Jarod and Liz (dotcom)?
Just had to add the wet ingredients and VOILA!
I was lucky enough to have 2yo Ali and almost-4yo Chloe to help make these cookies (I really need to stop calling referring to biscuits as cookies… it’s so un-Australian). Kids are cute with making cookies with their lop-sided dough balls (and it’s a great excuse to eat the dough as you go along!)
I’m still getting used to our new convection microwave oven and the temperature adjustments, so one batch of cookies came out really really soft (and really really nom, just like warm dough!). Think we got the hang of it in the end.
I’m eating one of these biscuits now, and getting crumbs in the keyboard :)
(Between you and me, I’m so jealous that I didn’t think of this before Liz did, dammit!)
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