When in doubt, add bacon

Long weekends are awesome, because I end up with a lot of 'dead time' that I need to fill in somehow.  My favourite way of filling in dead time is to cook.  As this is the Easter long weekend, I decided that I wanted to make something kind of festive.  Festive for me is an excuse to eat things that are bad for me!

I love cornbread, and like to bake some when I roast something fleshy.  There is something infinitely satisfying to make something that is hugely tasty, but that you feel good about eating.  There is no food regret with cornbread.  This is a Nigella Lawson recipe that I have modified a little to make little bundles of soft and crunchy joy.  After all, everything is better when you add bacon!

When in Doubt, Add Bacon Cornbread Muffins

175 g polenta
125 g plain flour
45 g white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder (not baking soda)
250 mL (1 cup) milk
1 egg
45 g butter
2-3 rashers of bacon
1 cup grated cheese (I like to use the sharpest cheddar I can find)

Preheat oven to 200 C (400 F) and grease a 12-hole muffin/cupcake tray
Mix together dry ingredients, then stir through the cheese in a large bowl
In a large measuring cup or jug with a spout mix the egg and milk together
Chop bacon into small pieces and place in a microwave safe bowl with the butter
Cook the butter and bacon together in a microwave until the butter is melted and the bacon is cooked (2-4 minutes)
Add the bacon and butter to the milk and egg, and mix well
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together until just combined
Divide the batter evenly in the muffin tray, then place in the preheated oven
Cook for 15-20 minutes until the muffins are firm when touched and are starting to brown

These muffins are great on their own, or served alongside something rich in flavour.  I love them with butter or cranberry sauce, but your results may vary - they are versatile and moreish.  Enjoy!

Cake + Tim Tams = extra noms

I'm currently in love with both slices and CWA recipes.  For those who don't know, slices can range anywhere between sheet cake and finger biscuits (cue people from either side of the equator Googling the term they don't recognise.  Sometime it's confusing to be multinational).  Slices are a great alternative to baking an all out cake served in slices, because you can limit portion size by cutting the slice into bars or squares.

I think I have resisted the lure of slices because with my background, baking was a Big Thing (TM).  Baking only ever happened for special occasions like birthdays or Christmas, and even then it was limited to Family Traditions (TM).  It was only after I moved out of home that I started baking recreationally.  I know, that's a weird thought - recreational baking - but I really do enjoy making things from the raw ingredients of flour, sugar, eggs and milk.  I find it soothing.

The reason why I find baking and roasting relaxing is basically because I don't let the fussy, fiddly nature of peoples' expectations get in the way.  I just focus on the creating and, most importantly, the taste.

Which brings us to Tim Tams!  Tim tams are awesome, and I can easily finish a packet on my own in an evening.  As I'm an older lady now, no longer a teenager, this isn't really advisable.  Tim Tams are often used in the kitchen (rather than right out of the package) to make rum balls, but I am rarely in the mood for anything that fussy.  Instead, I decided to modify a cake recipe from the CWA Classics cookbook (Kim's Chocolate Cake) to be a kind of a slicey thing with a Tim Tam layer.  Because if thete's anything that can make Tim Tams better, it's cake!

Cake Plus Tim Tams Equals Extra Noms Slice Thing

200g pack of Tim Tams (classic)
2 cups plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 and 1/2 cups of sugar
1 and 1/2 cups of buttermilk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons of melted butter

Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F)
Grease and line a 20 x 30 cm baking dish
Melt butter in the microwave and leave to cool
Place the Tim Tams into a ziplock bag and bash heartily with a rolling pin (You want a mix of crumbs and chunks - also, it's very therapeutic to bash cookies in a bag)
Mix together dry ingredients
Add buttermilk and eggs, and mix briskly
Add the melted butter and mix with vigour! (You want a mostly smooth batter)
Pour half of the batter into the pan
Sprinkle the Tim Tam crumbs over the layer as evenly as possible
Coat with the remaining batter to cover the Tim Tam crumbs
Bake for 45-55 minutes

This will never be a light, fluffy cake type affair.  Just looking at the list of ingredients, I was pretty sure that this wouldn't rise like a cake, but I was game to try it anyways (mostly because I needed an excuse to not eat the Tim Tams right out of the pack).   It is instead a thick, dense, moist cake/biscuit thing that is the same density as a thick fudgey brownie, but is nowhere near as rich.  This actually isn't a bad thing, because it means that at a slice-type-thing it is much more manageable.

This is one of those nice, filling tasty things that the CWA does so well - the ideal accompaniment to a cup of tea and a bit of a gossip.

Forgive me for doubting you, CWA

For those who aren't of the Australian persuasion, you might not be familiar with the Country Womens Association (CWA).  Really, it's a fabulous network designed to offer support and companionship in the bleak, sparsely population of rural Australia.  It has a reputation of being something of an old-fashioned, fussy type of organisation, but they do amazing things.

This was especially brought home to me many years ago when one of my aunts died out in a tiny country town between Melbourne and Sydney.  The funeral itself was filled with such sympathetic and warm-hearted people (a woman who I never met, and I never saw again stood up and helped me leave the church because I was so distraught).  After the funeral came the wake, and just about every single person from the town turned up; the CWA was there in force, providing food, tea and generally taking care of everything so the family didn't have to.

I've always steered away from CWA recipes in the (mistaken) idea that they were fussy, fiddly and old fashioned.  I've found as I've grown older, however, that there is something infinitely comforting in old fashioned recipes, be they from my adoptive home (Australia) or from my family's traditions (Danish, American and Hungarian).

I accidentally chose the following recipe because it seemed simple and tasty.  The problem with it is that is one of those (what I call) "Nanna Recipes".  There's always one Nanna Recipe in every family that is written on a scrap of paper and serves only as a reminder - not an actual recipe.

This is a modification of Mrs Arlene Roberts, from the Mount Morgan Branch in Queensland that I got from the CWA Classics cookbook.  It isn't really much of a modification, but instead a bit more detailed for us folk who aren't used to Nanna Recipes.

Forgive Me For Doubting You Jam Slice

50 g softened butter
2 cups self-raising flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
Strawberry jam (although plum or raspberry are more common)
1 cup dessicated coconut
2 tablespoons sugar

Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F)
Grease a 30 x 20 cm baking dish, and line the bottom with baking parchment
Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs (I've started using a pastry blender because I hate getting butter under my nails)
Add sugar and egg, and mix with a fork
Add enough water to form a dough, kneading it into the mixture until it is no longer dry (I ended up using about 1/4 of a cup - you don't want a soggy dough!)
Press dough into the pan, all the way into the edges and corners, trying to keep the layer smoothish
Spread jam over the top (about 1/4 cup) - just a little thicker than you would spread on toast, but not swimming in jam
Combine the coconut, sugar and remaining egg in a bowl with a fork
Sprinkle coconut mixture evenly over the top of the jam, and press ever so lightly to make sure it sticks
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the coconut starts to turn golden brown

Just like anything from the oven with jam in it, leave this to cool before you explore it too closely because the jam will be hot sugar napalm right out of the oven.  Once it has cooled, you can cut it into squares or fingers - what ever you fancy.

This slice is amazing.  It's not too sweet, it's not too crumbly, and it has a lovely soft base.  This is the kind of thing you can serve equally as a snack with tea or after a low-fuss dinner.  Highly recommended, and really super easy!

Noms.

The reason why you should bake cupcakes

Sometimes, you just want to bake.  It's cathartic and wonderfully satisfying to not just make something, but to make something that you know is fatty, sugary, utterly bad for you, and super tasty.  Normally I like to pass on my baking results to my workmates so that I don't eat them all myself.  Baking awesome things does not lead to a "healthy" weight unless you share, and sharing is most of the fun anyways.

I love anything that is "cookies and cream" flavoured.  Really, it's a short hand for something that's vanilla flavoured with chocolate flavoured cookie bits in it.  That being said, the easiest fix you can get for anything "cookies and cream" flavoured is Oreo cookies.  Of course, the filling of Oreos is not "creamy" per se - it's some awful vanilla and hydrogenated coconut oil confection that has no nutritional value save an enormous helping of calories.

I also have an unreasonable love for cupcakes.  Single serve, frosting covered confections that you can pretend are okay to eat because they are technically smaller than a slice of cake?  Hell yes.

The joy of baking comes from baking something that you love to eat.  Something that you would eat when raw and will eat when cooked, and that you know will bring a sunny moment to anyone else you want to offer them to.

These cupcakes are, basically, the entire point of baking in my mind.

The Reason Why You Should Bake Cupcakes

1 150 g pack of Oreo cookies
100 g of softened butter
1 cup of caster sugar (white sugar is just fine)
1 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste (or real vanilla essence)
2 large eggs (free range eggs would make me happy)
1 cup of self raising flour (not plain)
1/2 cup of milk (low fat milk is just fine - there's enough fat in the cookies to send it into terribly bad food territory)

Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F)
Using a 12-hole cupcake pan, place 1/2 Oreo cookie in the bottom of each cupcase case.  Remember the add?  Don't pull the cookies apart - twist them.  Place the filling side up.
Put the remaining cookies in a plastic bag (ziplock or whatever you have) and smash with something heavy like a rolling pin (some sort of canned food will work just as well) until the largest pieces are no bigger that 1/4 a cookie)
Cream the butter and the sugar, then add the vanilla
Add eggs, one at a time and mixing until incorperated
Slowly add 3/4 cup or so of flour until incorperated
Add milk and mix - the mix will look a little curdled, and that's okay
Add the last 1/4 cup of flour
Once the ingredients are just incorperated
Fold in the pre-bashed cookies
Split the batter evenly between the cookie lined cupcake cases
Bake for 15-20 minutes until the tops are golden and the batter no longer wobbled when you shake the pan, and that the batter springs back when lightly poked

These cupcakes are awesome as is, but can be iced with all kinds of things.  I like something simple like white chocolate (melted in a microwave) or a mix of peanut butter and milk chocolate (also melted in a microwave).  A good buttercream or cream cheese frosting would work well.

I melted about 1/3 of a cup or white chocolate chips with 1/3 of a cup of hazlenut spread (Nuttella to you and I) in the microwave and smeared it over the top.  It didn't end up setting, but it's still very tasty.

Remember, anything cooked always tastes better when it's shared with friends!

Marzipan plus chocolate is awesome

I'm trying to build up a backlog of recipes so that if I'm ever stuck with not enough joie de vivre to bake something on a given weekend I can still put something food porny up every week.  However, these cookies were too good to keep to myself, and so you get some mid-week tasties.

I am a big fan of comfort food.  Sometimes you need something that is full of flavour, full of fat, and utterly bad for you.  Sure, you could always just whip up some raw cookie dough (I am not afraid of raw eggs, but if you are there are many egg-free cookie dough recipes specifically for eating raw), but throwing something in the oven isn't really that much work if you're not interested in making something pretty.

In my mind, unless you're in a cooking competition or your job is making food pretty then taste comes first.  I think there's way too much pressure on people these days to produce works of edible art.  If it's just you and yours, there's no need to be fussy about things.

Just make stuff that you like to eat.

In that vein, these cookies are pretty much as ugly as sin.  They don't even have a quirky rustic feel to them - they just look like cow pies.  I regret nothing, though, because they are amazingly tasty.

Marzipan + Chocolate = Awesome Cookies

125 g marzipan (or 1/2 of a 250 g pack - marzipan is very heavy, so 250 g is less than 1 cup)
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla (I use vanilla paste, but any vanilla flavouring will do)
1 cup plain flour
1 cut white sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
1 pinch (1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon) salt
2 tablespoons of cocoa (unsweetened)
1 egg

Chop marzipan into rough chunks of about a teaspoon in size
Cut butter into 1 cm wide slices and put in a microwave safe bowl with marzipan
Melt marzipan and butter together in microwave (1 - 2 minutes)
CAUTION: this mixture will become hot liquid sugar and oil napalm; do not stick your finger in it, and do not lick the spoon!
Stir the melted mixture well to make sure the marzipan is totally melted
Add vanilla to the melted mixture and stir well

Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cocoa together in a large bowl
Pour melted mixture (carefully) into dry ingredients and stir with a spoon until about half the mixture is incorperated and wet - this will help cool the melted mixture quickly
Carefully test the temperature of the gooey mass - when it is warm, not hot, add the egg and mix thoroughly

Place teaspoons of the dough 5 cm apart on parchment-lined cookie sheets (these cookies spread a great deal)
Bake in a preheated oven at 200 C (400 F) for 8-10 minutes

These cookies can range between delicate and chewy or very crisp depending on how long you want to leave them in the oven.  The crinkly surface probably isn't great for icing, but they would work well if you wanted to sandwich them with a creamy filling as they are very thin.

Cheese in the title

As it is international pretend you're Irish day, I present one of my modifications on the classic Irish Soda Bread!

For some reason, I'm terrified of using yeast in cooking.  In fact, thus far I've only used yeast in a bread maker, and if it went wrong I could just blame the machine.  I'm not sure what it is - maybe it's my fear of bringing new life into the world only to kill it with fire.  One day I will face my fear of yeast, but until then I will continue to be a culinary coward.

I love carbohydrates.  Pasta, potatoes, rice, it's all good.  I especially love bread, so you can see the irony in me being afraid of yeast.  Fortunately, there are other ways to make bread!

Quick breads don't require yeast, but instead usually use something alkali like sodium bicarbonate and something mildly acidic like buttermilk.  If you've ever done the baking soda and vinegar volcano experiment, you'll know that acid + base = bubbles.  If the bubbles are formed in something substantial they don't pop as easily.  A nice flour and liquid medium is pretty strong so the bubbles don't pop, causing the bread to rise.  See?  Baking is all about science.

Personally, I feel that most things are made tastier by the addition of cheese.  Infact, I am drawn to just about anything with cheese in the title.  Thus I present to you my cheesey quick bread recipe.

Cheese in the Title Soda Bread

3 cups of flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (make sure that there are no lumps - mash it to make sure)
1 and 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard (optional, but I like the slight sharpness to go with the cheese)
1/2 to 1 cup shredded cheese of choice (sharp cheddars work well)
1 and 1/2 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 180 C (375 F) - you want to be able to put the dough in the oven as soon as it's ready

Mix dry and cheese together in a large bowl
Drop your mustard on top
Add one cup of buttermilk and mix
Gradually add more buttermilk until a soft dough is formed
(it may be a little sticky - that's okay!  It will just make tasty crinkly bits on the bread)
Knead the mix for about a minute
Form dough into a circle on a parchment lined baking tray, and cut a cross on the top

 Bake for 40-45 minutes

A scientific note on preheating ovens; most baked goods need to be put in a hot oven as soon as they are mixed.  The reason behind this is actually pretty cool.  When the reaction of the acid and the base starts forming bubbles, if the bubble is warmed up the gas inside it expands, which leads to an even lighter rise to your baked goods.  If the reaction between acid and base has slowed down or even finished by the time you start heating it, the dough won't rise as much.

Time for a new career pudding

You know those days where everything goes wrong at work to the point where you want to run away and join the circus?  Where you start to question not only your ability and expertise, but also the ethical (or lack thereof) foundation of the kind of employment you are in?

I recently had one of those days.  I since the age of seven have spent all of my life chasing the dream, full of idealism and the hope of making the world a better place.  Now it seems that everything I had convinced myself of is a small flower crushed under the heel of reality.

So I ranted.  I raved.  I actually had a crying fit from the sheer frustration of it all.

Then I did the only thing I could do - I made cupcakes.

Unmitigated Disaster Cupcakes

1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 and 1/2 cup flour
2 and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 egg
3/4 cup milk

Cream the butter and sugar together
Add maple syrup and cinnamon; mix well
Mix in 1 cup of flour, the add the baking soda and salt
Add egg and mix until combined
Add the milk - the mixture will start looking a little curdled, but that's okay
Mix in the remaining flour; it looks way too curdled, feel free to add in another tablespoon or two.
Spoon into cupcake cases (obviously already loaded into a 12-hole cupcake pan.  I use silicone cases, because the cakes pop out easily and the cases can be reused)

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C (375 F) for 15-18 minutes.

Of course, just like my career, these cupcakes turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.  I should have split the batter between 18 cupcake cases, not 12.  I should have paid more attention to the oven temperature.  I shouldn't have taken them in and out of the oven in a panic.  I should have used baking powder instead of baking soda.  All pretty elementary mistakes that made me question not just the wisdom of a career in science, but also what on earth was I doing making a cooking blog?

With a terrible day at work, and a tray of cupcakes that were simultaneously overflowing, slumped, burnt and underdone, all I wanted was a stiff drink. 

Three drinks later, I came up with a new plan.

Time For a New Career Pudding

3 cups cake crumbs, loosely packed (feel free to substitute your own cake disasters here)
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter

Take your own cake disaster, and fork it to death until you have small pieces and crumbs
Pour 3 cups (or so) of the crumbs into a cassarole dish and laugh maniacally
Pour milk over the crumbs and take a celebratory drink
Dot the top with a little butter, or not if you don't feel like it

Bake at 180 C (345 F) (or less, if you're worried about burning it again) for... who knows.  Until it gets crispy on top I guess.  It's not like you can make it any worse at this stage.  Say somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes. 

Handy hints; place the dish on a baking tray before you put it in the oven, so that if the pudding over boils it won't go all over the oven itself.  Leave the pudding to cool a little before you try to eat it - you don't want to add another disaster to your cooking day.

Serve warm or cold.

Work was awful, time for cookies

I find baking very relaxing.  There is something very comforting of just turning off your brain, following a set of instructions, and creating something awesome at the end of it.  Today was a day that I realised the only thing for it was to have a vodka and soda, and bake cookies.

A modified recipe of a modification of a recipe made by my brother, these Work Was Awful cookies are a great base from which to tailor to your specific wants or needs.  A drop cookie recipe that spreads a little and forms a nice, rounded surface, these cookies are as low key or as spectacular as you want them to be.  They are soft, delicate, and infinitely nomable.

Work Was Awful Cookies

2/3 cup softened butter
3/4 cup brown sugar (lightly packed)
1/4 cup white sugar
2/3 cup almond meal
2 eggs
2 cups self-raising flour

Extras
Rose Petal Cookies; 1 teaspoon rose water essence, 2-4 tablespoons dried rose petals (I used rose buds from T2 used for Just Rose Tea, ripping the petals from the stems and crumbling them in my fingers.  It was very therapeutic.)
White Chocolate and Cherry Flavour; 1 teaspoon maraschino cherry flavouring, 1/2 teaspoon chocolate flavouring, 1/2 to 1 cup roughly chopped white chocolate, 2-4 drops Rose Pink food colouring.

Cream butter and sugars
Mix in almond meal
Add eggs and mix until combined
Add flour, 1/4 cup at a time
Drop walnut sized balls of dough 3-4 cm apart on a parchment lined cookie tray

Bake in a preheated oven at 190 C (375 F) for 10 minutes, or until brown at the edges.

You can ice them when cool if you are feeling fancy, or mash into your gob while warm.

The cookies that started it all

I love to bake and I love to eat baked things, but I love sharing baked things with people even more.  I'm always looking for new, exciting and unusual recipes, and so when I first saw an Instructable for "Unicorn Poop Cookies" I knew that I had to make this rainbowed horror a reality in my kitchen.

Because I can't leave well enough alone, I did a bit of searching to find a recipe for smoother, less craggily topped cookies, as well as a recipe that was a little more reproducible in terms of colour.  (Yes, I did just use the word 'reproducible' while talking about cookies.  I'm a scientist - I can't help it.)

I found a fabulous method for making rich coloured cookie swirls thanks to Make.Bake.Celebrate, and an incredibly tasty yet easy to work with cookie recipe from Sugarbelle. 

While you can use what ever sugar cookie recipe you prefer, not all sugar cookies are the same, largely because of the consistancy of the dough.  Some recipes are more suited for rolling and cutting shapes out with a cutter and are best used when the dough is chilled - these cookies don't spread or rise very much, which is why they can hold the shape of whatever cutter you use.  Some recipes are best for 'drop cookies', where you drop teaspoons or scoops or dough on the tray with minimum fuss - these are basically 'fire and forget' cookies that spread and rise, leaving a rough, cracked surface. 

The recipe below, often called a 'play dough' cookie recipe, is somewhere in between.  They rise and spread a little, but they come out of the oven with a nice smooth surface.  I'm a fan!

Unicorn Poop Cookies

1 cup butter, softened (I almost always use salted butter, but you can use unsalted if you prefer)
1 and 1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon butter flavouring (Optional; you can find this in specialty bake stores)
2 and 3/4 cup plain flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Mix together flour, baking powder and salt in a seperate bowl
Cream softened butter and sugar
Add egg and flavouring, and mix until incorperated
Slowly mix in dry ingredients, 1/4 of a cup at a time

 The resulting dough may need to be kneaded of mashed together to form a smooth dough.  Once you are happy with the dough, divide it into four or five portions (depending on how many colours you'd like) in seperate bowls.  Add colouring to each dough, and knead together until the colour is evenly distributed.  I'd recomend latex gloves for this part! 

As far as the colouring goes, ideally you can use colour pastes/gels (from companies like Wilton), because they give a much richer end product.  Colour gels are expensive and can be a pain to clean up, so if you don't have any on hand you can happily use the standard food dyes that you can get in the supermarket.

Once your dough is dyed, roll grape-sized portions of each colour and set aside.  If your dough is too soft, chill it in the refrigerator for 15 mins or so. 

After rolling out your different coloured balls, take one ball of each colour and mash them together to make a larger, multicoloured ball.  Then it's just a simple matter of rolling out the ball between your hands like a sausage until it is somewhere between a finger and a pencil in thickness.  Coil the dough in a spiral from the inside out, and transer to a parchment lined baking tray.  Once safely on the tray, squash the coil with the palm of your hand to both slightly flatten the coil and to make sure all the spirals are stuck together.

Space the spirals about 3 cm (1 inch) apart.  Once you have finished making all your spirals, bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 C (350 F) for 7-10 minutes.  It will be hard to tell if they are ready, because of the vivid colours, but once you start to see browning at the edges they are ready to come out.  Don't be afraid to under bake these - they are just as delicious if they are a little bit soft!

Once the cookies are cooled you can either stuff them straight into your mouth, or if you're feeling especially fancy you can knock it up a notch with glitter and shiny things.  First apply a layer of sparkle gel (avaliable from Wilton), then sprinkle with edible glitter.  Add all kinds of edible shiny or frou-frou things.  Go nuts!

Eat and share with friends.  I recommend waiting until they take a bite before telling them that they are eating unicorn poop.