Tag: baking

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    COOKIE CAKE! Happy birthday Kunaal! #diabetes

    COOKIE CAKE! Happy birthday Kunaal! #diabetes

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    That's 68 choc chip cookies in 9 layers glued together with copious amounts of cream and mascarpone!

    That’s 68 choc chip cookies in 9 layers glued together with copious amounts of cream and mascarpone!

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    Is that 4 or 5 dozen? I've honestly lost count...

    Is that 4 or 5 dozen? I’ve honestly lost count…

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    The Fünkes are in the house!
    The Fünkes are in the house!

    Happy Halloween from Dr Tobias Fünke!
    Happy Halloween from Dr Tobias Fünke!

    The CHERPUMPLE that ate Chippendale - 5.9kg is 13lbs, folks!
    The CHERPUMPLE that ate Chippendale – 5.9kg is 13lbs, folks!

    CHERPUMPLE near completion. Crumb coat applied. The beast is chilling in the fridge!
    CHERPUMPLE near completion. Crumb coat applied. The beast is chilling in the fridge!

    The CHERPUMPLE is starting to take shape!
    The CHERPUMPLE is starting to take shape!

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    Less than 48hrs til our Halloween shindig. Lots happening...
    Less than 48hrs til our Halloween shindig. Lots happening…

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    Baking PB cookies in a shameless attempt to make my new co-workers like me...

    Baking PB cookies in a shameless attempt to make my new co-workers like me…

  • Christmas Craftiness 2011

    Christmas Craftiness 2011
    I just realised that I’ve made a lot of stuff this month that didn’t actually get documented on the blog yet. For posterity’s sake…

    Tree OrnamentsFelt Tree Ornaments
    As in previous years, a group of my knitting friends met up for a “Christmas Tea Party” earlier in the month. We always do a handmade ornament exchange. Rather than knit something, I saw some felt tree ornaments online and decided to sew instead. I made a template out of some cardstock and cut out the front and back of several trees. Then I hand-sewed on a selection of buttons to each front. (I’ve got a box of odd buttons.) Then I sewed the pieces together, sandwiching a piece of ribbon at the top for the hanger and leaving the bottom open. I stuffed each tree lightly with polyfill, then sewed the opening closed. I then trimmed the edges with pinking shears and did some decorative stitching with red yarn. They turned out pretty cute! I was very happy to see them go home with Kylie, who has hung them on her mantle. (In a stunning non-coincidence, I got Kylie’s project: a truly amazing knitted Christmas tree!)

    Nuts & Bolts and Compost CookiesNuts & Bolts and Compost Cookies
    Next up was the December meeting of the Inner City brand of the Knitters Guild, and I was on duty for morning tea. I decided to go with a sweet/salty theme and made “Nuts & Bolts” and Compost Cookies. Nuts & Bolts is basically the Australian equivalent of Chex Mix. (Recipe here.) You mix up cereal and nuts with a packet of soup mix and some spices and then bake it in the oven to get crispy. I also add pretzels to mine. This stuff is addictive! The Compost Cookies were famously created at the Momofuku Milk Bar in New York. (Recipe here.) The idea is that you throw all kinds of sweet and salty things in there: potato chips, coffee grinds, candy, whatever. I used dark choc chips, meringue pieces, Tim Tams, Sesame Snaps, pretzels, and sea salt crisps. They were pretty good! Even though I chilled them overnight, they still spread quite a bit in the oven. (Always happens. I still haven’t gotten the hang of the new oven yet, clearly.) Both dishes were a big hit at the meeting.

    Caramel Walnut Upside-Down Banana CakeCaramel Walnut Upside-Down Banana Cake
    We got some ladyfinger bananas in one of our FoodConnect boxes, so I decided to turn them into a cake. I’d made this Smitten Kitchen recipe before and the Snook really liked it. I actually divided the batter in two and made two smaller cakes this time: one for us and one to take to work. I still haven’t worked out the trick to getting flipping the cakes and getting the caramel out nicely, but the taste outweighs the messiness of the topping. Everybody at work loved it, and the cake I took in disappeared in about 5 minutes!

    Candied Gingerbread MenCandied Gingerbread Men
    I had a wild idea to make gingerbread men for our last day of work before the Christmas break. Of course, the only cookie cutter I own is the state of Michigan (don’t ask), so I had to go on a search for a proper one. Then I had to decide on a recipe. I went with Serious Eats’s Candied Gingerbread Men. It uses crystallized ginger, which I know the Snook likes a lot. He actually did most of the prep for the dough since he was on vacation this week. I cut them out and baked them late Wednesday night. I didn’t have any time to decorate them, but they were still tasty. The shapes were amusingly non-standard, mostly because I suck at rolling out dough and cutting consistent shapes. It was good fun though, and it made the whole house smell like Christmas!

  • Photo Post

    I found Jiffy mix at Broadway Reject Shop and FREAKED OUT. Never seen it in Oz before!

    I found Jiffy mix at Broadway Reject Shop and FREAKED OUT. Never seen it in Oz before!

  • Zucchini Bread

    Zucchini BreadWe’re coming to the end of zucchini season, I think, but we’re still getting a couple big ones in each weekly veggie box from Food Connect Sydney. Last weekend as a special treat I made them into the Snook’s favourite: Zucchini Bread. It’s actually not that well known in Australia, which is odd because it’s similar to Banana Bread and they love that here. Anyway, I thought I’d document the recipe since everyone who tastes it ends up asking for it! Here it is:

    1-1/2 c. all-purpose flour
    1 t. ground cinnamon
    1/2 t. baking soda
    1/4 t. baking powder
    1/4 t. salt
    1/4 t. ground nutmeg
    1 c. sugar
    1 c. finely shredded, unpeeled zucchini
    1/4 c. cooking oil
    1 egg
    1/4 t. finely shredded lemon peel
    1/2 c. chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

    1. Butter the bottom and halfway up the sides of your loaf tin. (If you butter all the way up the sides, your bread will sink down when you take it out of the oven.) In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients (the first six on the list) together. I never bother to sift; I just stir it really well.

    2. In another bowl, mix the wet ingredients (sugar, oil, zucchini, egg, lemon) together. Add the dry ingredients to this bowl and stir just until everything’s moistened. (It’ll be lumpy. That’s good.) Fold in the nuts if you’re using them.

    3. Dump into your loaf pan. Bake in a 350F/180C oven for 50-55 minutes or til a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool the pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then take it out of the pan and cool as long as you can bear not to eat it.

    Makes one loaf. (My photo shows two because I doubled it.) I like it warm with butter on top. You can even toast it, if you’re weird like the Snook.

    Ingredients for the zucchini bread.

    Zucchini Bread ingredients

    The dry ingredients, all mixed together.

    Dry ingredients

    The wet ingredients. (If you’ve got a food processor with a grating attachment, use that. Saves heaps of time!)

    Wet ingredients

    Mixing it all up together.

    Mixing it up

    Into the loaf pans, ready for baking!

    Ready for baking

    Freshly baked zucchini bread.

    Zucchini Bread

  • Tim Tam (and Oreo!) Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Sometimes I amaze even myself. I knew I wanted to make some sort of sweet treat this week as a belated birthday gift for my friend Kunaal. (He was overseas on his actual birthday a couple weeks ago.) Kunaal has a serious sweet tooth, and he is partial to chocolate. I suddenly remembered seeing Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies being linked on a bunch of food blogs recently. “But self,” I thought, “Oreos are kind of a novelty here and they’re really more American than Australian. WHAT ABOUT TIM TAMS?” Tim Tams, for the uninitiated, are just about the best chocolate cookie in the world. They’re an Australian icon, and everybody who visits and tries them gets addicted. What better way for an immigrant like myself to symbolize the two cultures than by baking one national icon inside another?

    Tim Tam Cookies

    Oh man, they turned out AMAZING. I was half worried that the chocolate coating would melt and, like, leak out of the cookies or something, but they worked perfectly. I followed Picky Palate’s recipe pretty much exactly. I have to give a big thank you to the Snook, who helped with the assembly. We did half of them with Oreos, and half of them with Tim Tams. (We cut the Tim Tams in half so they were square rather than oblong.) These are some pretty hefty cookies! I let each batch bake for about 14 minutes or so, just until they were golden and lovely. Then they cooled on the tray for 5 minutes before going on to a rack. I was worried they’d be squishy, but they feel pretty robust and I don’t reckon transportation will be a problem.

    Such a great idea, and such a great result! Now I want to bake more things inside of things. Hmmmm…