Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

A little unfinished business...

I was rolling a batch of ginger and macadamia balls tonight and jigging to a happy Christmas tune when it hit me.

Not a rolling pin, just the memory that weeks ago I promised some Instagram friends that I'd share my recipes here for Lemon Passionfruit Slice and Apricot Oat Bars - and I forgot!

So here we go...
 Lemon Passionfruit Slice


Ingredients
1 cup self raising flour
1 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup caster sugar
125g butter, melted
395g can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup passionfruit pulp, plus extra to serve

Method
Preheat oven to moderate, 180 degrees C. Lightly grease an 18cm x 28cm lamington pan. Line base and sides with baking paper, allowing paper to extend 2cm above the rim of the long sides.

Sift flour into a bowl. Stir in coconut and sugar. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the melted butter, mixing well.

Press firmly into the base of the prepared pan. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until slightly golden.

Meanwhile, in a bowl combine condensed milk, lemon juice and passionfruit. Pour over base and bake for a further 8-10 minutes. Allow to cool and chill overnight.

Lift the slice from the pan. Peel away the paper and cut into 24 squares. Drizzle with extra passionfruit before serving.

Apricot Oat Bars


Ingredients for Base
1 cup Plain Flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup rolled oats
4 oz butter

Method
Melt butter and combine with the remaining ingredients. 
Press over the base of a greased 9 inch square pan. Bake in moderate oven for 15 minutes.

Ingredients for topping
6 oz chopped dried apricots
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup Self Raising flour
1 cup coconut

Method
Cover apricots with hot water, stand 5-10 minutes, then drain.
Beat eggs well,and combine with remaining ingredients.
Spread topping over the partly-cooked base, and bake in a moderate oven for a further 20 to 25 minutes (until firm to the touch).
Cut into bars when cool. Makes 24.

  If you've made it this far without falling asleep you deserve a reward, so here's the recipe for the Ginger and Macadamia Balls I was making tonight.


Ingredients
100g raw macadamias
1 x 250g packet of Gingernut biscuits
3/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 tablespoon Golden Syrup
90g butter
1 and a half cups coconut

Method
Place nuts on a baking tray and bake in oven 200 degrees C for 5 to 6 minutes until golden. Roughly chop nuts.
Crush biscuits in a food processor. Place biscuit crumbs in a bowl with the chopped macadamias.
Place the condensed milk, Golden Syrup and butter in a Pyrex jug and microwave on High for 2-3 minutes or until the butter melts.
Pour this mixture over the crumb/nut mixture and mix well.
Roll teaspoons of mixture into balls, roll in coconut. Refrigerate until firm.

Almost no-bake - if you don't count toasting the macadamias.



Saturday, September 17, 2011

I made this for Sarah’s birthday dinner last night

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Ingredients for torte

125g hazelnuts

4 egg whites (I hope you like making egg custard, otherwise that’s a lot of leftover egg yolks)

1 cup + 1 tablespoon castor sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon vinegar

 

Ingredients for topping

450g raspberries (frozen will do)

3 tablespoons castor sugar

1 cup cream

vanilla to taste

sifted icing sugar

 

Method

Spread the hazelnuts on a tray and toast them for about 6 minutes in a hot oven. (This is inexact – just keep checking them.) Cool. Then grind them (not too finely) in the whizz.

Beat egg whites. Add in tablespoon of castor sugar, beat in and then gradually add the rest.

Add vinegar and vanilla.

Fold in the ground toasted hazelnuts.

Spoon into 2 x 8 inch cake tins (lined or sprayed with cooking spray) and cook in a moderately slow oven for 40 minutes.

 

Assembly

Beat cream, sugar and vanilla until thick. Spread tops of both torte bases with cream, then sprinkle over the thawed raspberries (or other berries of your choosing).

Lift one base and place it on top of the other to create a layer-cake. Sift icing sugar over the completed torte before serving.

 

This quantity serves about 8, but it’s my go-to easy dessert for a crowd so I just multiply the ingredients and use bigger tins.

Last night I was cooking for 10 and wanted generous servings, so I doubled the recipe and used a large and a small springform pan to create a tiered look to the birthday ‘cake’.

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Maximum effect – minimum effort!

(and you can cover your mistakes with cream. Just saying Winking smile)

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Friday, August 26, 2011

Company’s a’comin’

Cooking, cleaning and tidying the house for just under sixty guests coming to afternoon tea tomorrow, along with my regular “supporting-my fabric-habit” job,  has occupied quite a bit of time and headspace this week and accounts for the hiatus in blog activity around here. Please accept my apologies, dear reader.

Since there has been little quilting done, I thought you might like the recipe for one of the slices I’ll be serving up to my guests.

It’s an oldie, but a goodie, and comes from a tattered and stained little cookbook I’ve owned for more than 30 years.

Raspberry Slice

Makes about 16 pieces

Base ingredients

1/2 cup sugar

2 egg yolks

Raspberry jam

2 ounces (60 grams) softened butter

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

Cream the butter and sugar, add egg yolks then flour. Press into a tin 8” x 12” (I line it with baking paper just to be careful, but you can just grease the tin if you don’t have the paper). Cover with jam. My recipe says 2 tablespoons, but as you can see I use much more – no sense in skimping on such a yummy ingredient!

 

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Topping

1/2 cup sugar

2 egg whites

1 cup coconut

Beat the egg whites .  Add sugar and beat some more until you have a stiff meringue. Add coconut and stir in well. Spread this meringue mixture carefully over the jam.

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Bake in a moderate oven (about 170 degrees Celsius) for 20 minutes. The aroma of toasting coconut will fill the house, and the result is this crispy topping with a soft fluffy inside.

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Beneath that  is a layer of yummy raspberry jam, and on the bottom a buttery biscuit base.

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This recipe never fails to attract compliments (always acceptable!) and requests for the recipe. So it goes without saying that I make it often Winking smile

Do you have an old favourite, never-fail, crowd pleasing recipe like this?

Di

Monday, March 3, 2008

Cooking for Dummies

Several posts ago I told you how, for 4 weeks at a time, we entertain engaged couples who are doing our church's "Christian Marriage" course on Sundays. Last Sunday was the final week of the current course and we made it a little more special by inviting the entire 5.30pm congregation back for dinner with us.
I try to make such occasions as simple as possible. Anyone who offers to bring food is embraced with gratitude and asked to bring a salad (no last minute fiddling for me!). I use disposable plastic plates - but real cutlery and wine glasses! We provide the meat, on this occasion several large rumps of beef roasted on the barbie, and for dessert I make a selection of slices and tarts, easy finger food.
Last week my mother gave me a copy of the new book, "4 Ingredients" by Kim McCosker and Rachael Bermingham, and I must share with you a great tart recipe I found in it. Like all the recipes in this clever little book, it uses just 4 ingredients and is foolproof for a "dummy" like me. You can see these little beauties in the photo above.
Caramel Ginger Tarts
12 ginger nut bickies
400g can Nestle Top 'n' Fill Caramel
1/2 tub whipped cream
1 banana (optional, IMHO)
Place cookies on the individual circles of a patty cake tin and bake in 150 degrees C oven for 10 minutes. Remove and gently mould the softened bickies so they make shallow tart cases. When cool, add enough caramel to fill each bickie. Top with a dob of whipped cream and a slice of banana (I left this off).
They are absolutely delicious!

Monday, February 11, 2008

A brie-licious salad

Three times a year, over a 4 week period, our church's Assistant Minister, Ben, runs a course Exploring Christian Marriage for some of the couples who are soon to be married here. As part of this, after they've been to the evening church service, they all come back to our home (the rectory) where Ben, Boak and I host a sit-down dinner, which has proved a great way to get to know them - and for them to get to know each other.
Cooking creatively for up to 18 can sometimes stretch my imagination and skills, especially as we try to vary the menu over the 4 weeks that we do this. Tonight, the first week of a new course, we served beef, oven-roasted on the barbecue, accompanied by tiny chat potatoes and this melon and brie salad which is a new one I've been trying out recently. Dessert was chocolate panforte (just a sliver), with home-chopped fruit salad.
I thought you might be interested in the salad recipe...
Melon and Brie Salad
(The quantities depend on your own personal taste)
Toast flaked almonds in a pan with a spray of olive oil, tip into a dish and leave to cool. Slice up and scatter bite-sized pieces of honey-dew melon and brie, and halved cherry tomatoes, over a bed of baby salad leaves on a platter. Just before serving drizzle extra virgin olive oil over the salad and grind some black pepper and rock salt over as well. Then top it all with a sprinkling of the cooled toasted almond flakes. Yummm!