Category Archives: Baking

Digging in the Dirt

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Today we have been out in the garden.  Vegetable gardens dug over and mushroom compost added.  Then it was time to plant out our winter crops.  Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, snow peas, strawberries as well as red and brown onions.

Most of them were bought as seedlings but I did have a go at raising some from seed.  The cabbages were from seed as are one lot of broccoli and one of cauliflower.  They are somewhat less advanced than the seedlings so hopefully it will spread the harvesting out over a longer period of time.

Continuing on yesterday’s theme of using up everything, I made some pumpkin and sultana scones with some mashed pumpkin that had been thawed from the freezer and not completely used.  I did not get to make the lemon butter so that will have to wait for another day.

2012-05-20 01

A Lesson From The Past

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Some people in various parts of the world are living in economies that are officially described as being in a recession but wherever we live, these are definitely uncertain times.  At the same time there is research showing that many 1st world nations waste up to 20% of all food purchased.  That is the equivalent of bringing home 5 bags of groceries and throwing one bag of groceries straight into the bin.

Perhaps it is time to look back to earlier generations and their ‘waste not, want not’ mentality.  Everything was used, re-used and re-fashioned until not a single thing was left.  This applied in equal measure to food, clothing, furniture and so on.

Today I want to show you how we can easily make better use of the abundant food that we have.

This morning I juiced a large carrot, 2 apples and about 1/3 of a pineapple.  I drank the juice for breakfast and saved the pulp.

Next was a 600 ml container of cream.  This was bought in January and not required for a luncheon we were hosting so it was put in the freezer.  Last weekend I thawed it to have some cream on dessert.  Only a small amount was used so today I put it in my Kitchen Aid stand mixer and made butter.  I followed the description from here.  I was very pleased with the result.

2012-05-19 01I used 100g of the butter when I made pastry and this is what was left.  From about 500ml of cream I made 220g of butter and had 250ml of buttermilk.

I used the buttermilk tonight when I made a bacon and mushroom quiche for dinner.  I mixed a couple of tablespoons of milk powder into the buttermilk to make a thicker liquid for the quiche.

2012-05-19 02While the oven was on I also made a batch of muffins using the leftover fruit pulp from my juice.

2012-05-19 03I made beef curry in the slowcooker from a recipe in one of the Sally Wise cookbooks.  This is now divided into portions and frozen along with several serves of bolognaise sauce and a dish of lasagne.

2012-05-19 04Making these meals is a reminder of how we can use our own condiments.  The curry called for tomato sauce, worcestershire sauce, chutney and curry powder as some of the ingredients.  I had home-made versions of all of these to use.  Some of the pasta sauce I made during the summer when tomatoes were very cheap and plentiful went into the bolognaise sauce.  The lasagne sheets were ones I had made some weeks ago and frozen.  It is great to have so many of the ingredients for meals at your fingertips and know that they have been created in your own kitchen and you know exactly what went into them.

The Duke has made our bread from bought pre-mixes for a number of years and now he is experimenting with making it from scratch.  He has the white loaf pretty well perfect but has working on getting the wholemeal loaf the way he wants it.  Here is the result of his effort today and naturally he is very pleased.

2012-05-19 05Tomorrow I plan to make lemon butter which will use our own eggs and lemons as well as some of the butter I made today.

How do you make the most of the food you have?

Friday Favourites – Lemon Tart

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I mentioned yesterday that ‘Friday Favourites’ will only appear when there is something really special that I want to share.  This is one such recipe.

2012-04-27 01LEMON TART

1 quantity of sweet pastry.  See this previous post about making pastry, the sweet pastry recipe is towards the bottom of the page.

FILLING

2 eggs
2 lemons
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon cornflour
1 tablespoon plain flour
1 dessertspoon butter

Separate the eggs.  Beat the egg yolks, water, juice and ring of the lemons.  Place mixture in a saucepan with the sugar and flours.  Blend carefully over a low heat until the mixture boils and thickens.  Remove from the heat.  Beat in the butter and allow to cool.  Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into the mixture.  Spoon the mixture into the tart shell and sprinkle with coconut.  Chill.

Serve with ice-cream or cream.

NOTES:  You will have an egg white left from the pastry if you use my recipe so I usually add it to the other egg whites so I get a bit more to mix into the tart.

Kitchen Kapers

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I have spent the best part of today in the kitchen.  The first thing was to juice the 60 limes I picked from the tree.  Some is in ice-cube trays in the freezer and the remainder in a jug in the refrigerator.  I will freeze this in trays as well once the others are completely frozen and can be removed from the trays and placed in a bag.

Next were 5 pumpkins from the garden.  Unfortunately, I cannot leave them on the vine until the stalks dry out completely because some of the wildlife starts to eat them once they are mature.  Because I have to pick them before the stalk has withered, this means that they will not store.  So my plan was to cut and peel them (a mammoth job), roast in the oven and then mash the pumpkin.  I have frozen it in batches so that it can be made into soup as required.  By just freezing the mashed pumpkin I save space in the freezer as compared to making and freezing the soup.

I also sorted through the freezer and pulled out this bag of chopped onion tops.

2012-04-22 01These are from the onions I grew last winter but our winter is not long enough for the tops to die down before I have to harvest the onions.  Otherwise our wet weather starts and they would just rot in the ground.  I diced all of the onions and froze them in 150g packs and I could not bear to waste the fresh green tops so chopped them and pt the bag of them in the freezer while I considered what to do with them.

2012-04-22-02I decided to thaw them out and then put them on the trays in the food dehydrator.  My plan is to dry them completely and then grind them in the spice grinder to make my own onion powder for seasoning. I will post about the success or otherwise of this venture in a day or so.

The other thing I retrieved from the freezer was a bag of cherry tomatoes.  These were picked from the neighbour’s garden a couple of months ago when they were away and I didn’t have time to do anything with them apart from wash, hull and freeze them.

I found a tomato sauce recipe on the internet and made a couple of adjustments to suit the ingredients I had.  I cooked up the sauce and 1.9 kg of cherry tomatoes made up into 1.75 litres of sauce.

Here it is – bottled and ready to add to the stock cupboard.

2012-04-22 03I made 3 batches of muffins – lime and coconut, fig and almond as well as banana ones.  This is some of them packed and ready to freeze.

2012-04-22 04While the oven was on I made another zucchini quiche.  We have an abundance of eggs and since this uses 5 eggs it is a good way to use some up.

I had planned to make so more fresh pasta – using eggs again – but the day was almost over.  I will save that job for Wednesday which is a public holiday here (Anzac Day).

Most of my cooking and preparation was a direct result of produce from our garden, either fresh or frozen.  Since we are blessed to be able to grow this food I feel it is important to make sure that we use it to the best of our ability.

Baking Powder – An Update

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Sometimes an innocent post takes on a life of its own.  I received this comment to yesterday’s post.

“Do you make your own baking powder? If not, to do so, mix 1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda with 2 teaspoons cream of tartar. If you wish to store it, add 1 teaspoon corn starch to absorb any moisture from the air. Most commercially made baking powders contain aluminium.”

Thanks to Val for the comment.  I set off to the world of Google and discovered that the presence of aluminium in commercially prepared baking powder seems to be common knowledge.  Which rock have I been hiding under?

This then begs the question – Does self-raising flour contain aluminium?  Once again, thanks to Google, the answer is most definitely yes.

So, what started out as a way to simplify and streamline my pantry ingredients to a single type of flour has turned into a campaign to eliminate aluminium from our diet.  Whilst nothing has been conclusively proven, there is potentially a link between levels of aluminium in the brain and Alzheimer’s Disease.  Of course, flour and baking powder are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ingestion of aluminium.  Many processed foods will also contain it.  It yet another example of the importance of eating food in as natural a state as possible to avoid these hidden ingredients.

I will be discarding the baking powder and buying cream of tartar  and bicarbonate of soda to create my own baking powder.  The proportions are 2 parts of cream of tartar and 1 part of bicarbonate of soda.

There are numerous sites that discuss making your own baking powder but this blog post explains it very clearly.  I will be making a bulk quantity with the addition of cornflour and then using 2 teaspoons of the mixture to 1 cup of plain flour to make my own aluminium-free self-raising flour.

What do you think?

 

Simply Baking

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Decluttering is not just about throwing out the piles of junk gathering dust in the basement.  Nor is minimalism about having a sparsely furnished apartment with almost no sign of human habitation.  They are words which are open to interpretation but the over-arching concept is to simplify our homes and lives so that we can make time and space for living.

It is important to keep baking and cooking simple.  Creating meals from scratch can easily lead you to acquire all manner of ingredients.  All too often these are used once and then end up relegated to the back of the cupboard.  I have a well-stocked pantry that has the basic ingredients that I use to create the meals we eat.

I also regularly make substitutions to new recipes so that they fit my ingredients.  It is easy to be conned into having many varieties of one ingredient, such as sugar.  There is caster, white, soft brown, raw, Demerara and numerous others.  I use raw sugar for most general use.  I also keep soft brown sugar and caster sugar.  If a recipe demands a specialty sugar that I feel cannot be satisfactorily substituted I discard the recipe.

Flour is another example of many options available – white, wholemeal, organic, stoneground, plain, self-raising.  I prefer to keep both white and wholemeal.  I use white flour for pastry, pasta and making roux for sauces but other than that I tend to use wholemeal or half and half if I want a lighter texture.  I only buy plain flour and add baking powder to make self-raising flour as required.

2012-03-28 01I buy my flour in 5kg bags from  Simply Good.  I also buy my baking powder in bulk from the same store.

2012-03-28 02The baking powder is sold from bulk bins so I fill a recycled paper bag with it and then decant into the large glass jar. which is in my stock cupboard.  I refill the small container in the pantry as required.  Please do not not confuse bicarbonate of soda (bicarb) with baking powder.  Baking powder is a combination of bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar.

2012-03-28 03With basic ingredients to hand it is easy to bake for your family where you know exactly what is in the food.  I made these muffins this morning with the last of some bottled cherries I had bought a couple of years ago – not sure why?  The recipe was the basic muffin recipe from the book, “Down to Earth” by Rhonda Hetzel.  You can find out more on her blog.

2012-03-28 04I made a zucchini quiche for dinner at the same time.  I always try to cook more than one dish when I have the oven turned on so that the power is used efficiently.

Have you tried to simplify the ingredients in your pantry?

Filling The Freezer

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I spent yesterday afternoon in the kitchen and here are some of the results.

A batch of pastry used to make 12 mini meat pies

and 3 meal-sized pies (pastry tops only)

Trifle – using leftover sponge from when I made a Dorothy the Dinosaur cake 6 months ago.

Zucchini and carrot quiche – to use up some of the eggs we have in abundance.

Banana cake – more eggs

Lemon Delicious – eggs and lemons

It makes good economic sense do do a batch of baking while the oven is turned on.

I also made refried beans in the slow-cooker, lasagne sheets (more eggs),  spreadable butter, chopped up chillies to dehydrate them and picked 2 kg of cherry tomatoes from the neighbour’s garden.  They are now frozen waiting for me to have time to make tomato sauce.

The freezers are full and we have plenty of food for the days when I don’t have the time or energy to cook a meal from scratch.  Do you do a big cook-up in one go?

Friday Favourites – Date & Ginger Loaf

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This is my variation on a gingerbread recipe I have had for years.  It is a soft, cake-like gingerbread, not hard, biscuit-style gingerbread.  The recipe came from my mother but I do not know any more about the origin of it.

GINGERBREAD

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 cup treacle
1 cup hot water
2 and 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped dates

Cream the butter and sugar, add egg and beat well.  Combine water and treacle.  Combine all of the remaining ingredients except the dates.  Add the treacle mixture alternately with the dry ingredients.  Finally, mix in the dates.  Pour into a greased, lined tin.  Bake at 170 degrees for 45 – 55 minutes.

2012-02-10 02The original recipe did not have the dates in it.  This is a versatile cake as it can be served as a dessert  with custard, sweet white sauce or caramel sauce.  It is also makes a nice cake for morning tea.  I usually slice it and add to our packed lunches.

2012-02-10 03