Tag Archives: baking

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.

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?

Introducing Friday Favourites – Best Banana Cake

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Today is the beginning of a new feature, ‘Friday Favourites’ where I will share one of my favourite recipes.  I hope to include a photo as well as the hints, tips, variations and shortcuts that are what makes a ‘tried and true’ recipe so appealing.

How often have you made a recipe that simply does not live up to the description or the photo which attracted you to it in the first place?  Here is an opportunity to bypass the less than stellar successes.

Streamline and simplify your cooking and recipes, then you will be more inclined to cook.  Remember the line, “whip up a batch of scones”?  It was what women of my grandmother’s generation could do when company was imminent.  The recipe and method were simple, ingredients always to hand and they knew the recipe off by heart.  I do not pretend to be able to make scones so I will stick to what I can do well.

It seems that there as many banana cake recipes as there are people in the world and I feel as though I have tried most of them.  In my opinion this one is as good as you will get.

BANANA CAKE

1/3 cup oil
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed banana (2-3 bananas, depending on size)
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 cups plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup milk

Beat oil and sugar until smooth.  Add beaten eggs, one at a time then beat in mashed banana and vanilla.  Sift flour and combine dry ingredients, add alternately with the milk and stir until mixed well.  Pour into a greased, lined loaf tin.  Bake at 180 degrees for 45 mins or until an inserted skewer comes out cleanly.

That is the recipe, now for the reality.

This is a great recipe and it can be made using 2 utensils – a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon.

I do not sift the flour – in fact I do not own a sifter!

I use 1/8 cup of skim milk powder mixed with the dry ingredients and add ½ cup of water in lieu of the milk.

The eggs are not pre-beaten before I add them at the same time.

I use an empty butter wrapper to line the base a halfway up the side of the tin.  I keep used wrappers in the refrigerator specifically for lining cake tins.

The cake may be iced with your choice of frosting but it is just as nice plain.  I slice and freeze the cake in a container in the freezer.  Individual slices can easily be removed for snacks or packed lunches.

Enjoy and have great weekend.

Anzac Cake

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Here is a recipe for a cake which is loosely based on the ingredients used in the iconic Anzac biscuits.  I found it here thanks to Tania.  It came from this blog which I have added to my regular reads.  Anyway, back to the cake……

ANZAC CAKE

1/2 cup Golden Syrup

125 grams butter

2 cups self-raising flour

1/2 cup castor sugar

1/2 cup coconut (shredded or dessicated your choice)

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup milk

 Method

Combine Butter and Golden Syrup in a saucepan, stir over heat until smooth.

Combine sifted flour, sugar and coconut in a large bowl.

Add syrup mixture and mix well.

Using an electric beater gradually beat in the combined eggs and milk.

Pour mixture into a prepared 20x30cm cake tin and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for approximately 30 minutes.

When done the cake will look a lovely golden colour.

Icing

60 grams butter (softened)

1 teaspoon honey

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups icing sugar

1 tablespoon hot water

Beat all ingredients together.  Spread over cake and sprinkle with more coconut.

Here is the finished product.

This definitely a winner in my opinion.

Frugal – Baking

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Today’s post comes under ‘F’ for frugal.

Since we have been away for a bit over 2 weeks there is not much in the way of prepared food in the house, however, there are plenty of staples and ingredients.  Tonight I made pizza for dinner so while the oven was on I also made a boiled fruit cake for snacks and lunches.  The recipe is one that has been passed down to me from my mother.

It is not only recipes but all sorts of kitchen hints and tips that are part of the connection between one generation and the next.  Simple things – like lining a cake tin.

What did we use before baking paper and silicone bakeware?  Butter wrappers and brown paper.  I use this method, especially for fruit cakes just as my mother does and her mother before her.

Cake tin lined with butter wrapper

I had finished making a batch of spreadable butter so had this wrapper which I used to grease the tin and then lined the tin with it.  A heavy paper bag cut to size completed the lining for the sides of the tin.  If the tin is round or irregularly shaped you can use the tip of the scissor blade to trace around the tin for a pattern so that the paper is an exact fit.

Ready to turn into cake tin lining

Prepared cake tin

Fruit cake mixture

The mixture is then added.

Ready to go in the oven

Once the paper is removed the end result is definitely worthwhile.

Fruit cake

Also, to prevent the top of the cake burning you can add several layers of heavy paper or newspaper on top of the cake tin (not touching the surface of the cake).

I will post the recipe in the next few days.

I have completed 1 of my 4 jobs for this week’s challenge. The car is completely cleaned inside and out.