Bananas

This Banana loaf has been a regular in our house for many many years, I might have even blogged about it here before.... I cant remember!

I instagramed a picture recently and I had a few requests for the recipe - so here it is.

Banana Loaf

I use a 10 X 20 cm loaf tin - you could bake it any size or shape you like. My batter usually comes up to about an 1/2 an *inch below the top of the tin when I pour it in.

*its the quilter in me - I like using inches

Grease the cake tin with a little butter

Pre heat oven to 170c Fan forced

Ingredients & Method

3 medium very ripe bananas mashed 

1 cup raw sugar

1 tsp cinnamon powder

80g butter melted

1/2 tsp vanilla paste

2 large eggs

3/4 cup milk

mix all the above ingredients until well combined.

add in

2 1/4 cups plain flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

200g block of dark chocolate roughly chopped into big chunks 

mix until just combined

pour/ scrape into the prepared loaf tin and sprinkle about a tablespoon or so of extra raw sugar onto the top of the cake batter in the tin

bake for 1 hour - checking with a wooden skewer that the middle is cooked.

Turn the cake out of the loaf tin whilst still hot and let the cake cool on a wire rack.

Yummiest eaten still warm and fresh or sliced and toasted the next day.

I also had a go at making homemade Nutella.

Funnily I cant actually remember how I made it..... 

I vaguely remember that the recipe I found called for 2 cups of roasted hazelnuts, 1 cup cocoa, 1 cup icing sugar and a little vegetable oil until you get the right consistency. All whizzed together in the food processor.

 It tasted a little lacking - I added in half a block of dark chocolate and we were in business. 

I really need to mess around a little more to get the recipe right, but definitely worth a go and something for the kids to try. 

I would have liked to add coconut oil instead of vegetable oil..... but the kids in our family aren't coconut fans (insert sad face because I LOVE coconut)and I suppose it then wouldn't be Nutella but a hazelnut chocolate & coconut spread.

Let me know how you go with the cake or any tried and tested Nutella recipes you may have

Xx Siobhan 

The Carrot Cake experiment........

I've been home working in the shed and on the computer - the usual I cant show you what I'm working on business...............

Not showing people what I'm up to is a bit tricky for me - I'm not great at keeping quiet.

Anyway I can show you what I baked today!

The cool autumn weather has gotten me very bake-y (I know thats not a word)

The other day I discovered much to my horror that my children didn't know what a carrot cake was!? I'm talking about teenagers..... not toddlers.

Today I was on a mission to show them what they had missed - moist yummy sweet carrot cake with cream cheese icing - My favourite as a kid. My Nana baked it all the time.

Its one of those nice and easy throw everything together and bake cakes. 

 Serves 12
530 Calories/ 2217KJ per serve (including icing)

Ingredients

2 cups plain flour
Pinch of salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 teaspoons of bicarb of soda
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 & 1/2 cups raw sugar (any sugars fine)
4 eggs
200ml vegetable oil
400g crushed canned pineapple drained
3 cups grated carrot (I used 7 small carrots)
1/2 cup almond meal

23cm or 9 inch round springform cake tin greased and lined.

Oven set at 170C (not fan forced)
or 330F on an electric oven

Using two bowls
put all the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another bowl (inc carrot). Mixing the wet ingredients.
Place the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients bowl and with a wooden spoon stir to combine.

Pour the stiff mixture into your greased and lined cake tin, tap it on the bench a few times to get the mixture flat.

Bake for 50/ 60 minutes - test with a wooden skewer, its ready when the skewer comes out clean.


leave to cool in tin

Lime Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients 

250grams Cream Cheese

1 cup icing sugar mixture

1 Lime rind finely grated and juice

Beat the cream cheese until soft. Add the rind/ juice of the one lime and 1 cup of icing sugar mixture. Beat until smooth.

When the cake has cooled completely spread the icing on top of the cake.

The verdict

My husband and I loved it - It was beautiful moist and the cream cheese zesty icing.... Heaven 

BUT

The kids weren't convinced .....

Looks like I should have introduced it at an earlier age. 

Well I am off 

Let me know what you think of carrot cake?!

Xx Siobhan 

Winter Days

Cold I don't mind BUT constant rain ....... 

especially when you have a small house and lots of children.

on the plus side it means lots of lazing around and not feeling guilty about it.

I picked up the latest Donna Hay magazine yesterday whilst standing in a very long queue at the shops - apparently when its raining on a Saturday everyone decides to go grocery shopping. Remind me not to do that again.Ever.

Anyway the magazine had some scroll recipes in it and Voila - Scrolls for morning tea today.

I made the dark chocolate and coffee version.

Super easy and even easier than it should have been because I made my dough in my bread machine. The dough turned out perfectly. 

Now I'm off to tidy the mess I made :-/

Xx Siobhan 

Seasonal Cooking - Fig Tart

On arrival back home after nearly three weeks away on our Summer Holiday up North I set off to do some grocery shopping and came home with copious amounts of Fruit.

In summer the kids basically live in the pool and feast on Mangoes,Bananas,Watermelon & lots of stone fruits. 

To my surprise the fruit shop also had lots of locally grown boxes of Figs at a great price, I tend to think of Figs as an Autumn fruit... I looked it up and I was very surprised to see Figs had two seasons of produce a year. 

One in Autumn and one in late Summer.

You learn something new every day...

anyway

I love figs

Savoury or sweet and they always photograph beautifully!

We have been living off them (40 in the box)and the last of the figs started to ripen quickly.

Sydney has been a strange one in the last few days or so with its weather.

 Our second day home (Friday) saw the hottest recorded weather in Sydney's history!

The inside of our house was 40c at one stage.

Thankfully that evening a lovely cool southerly change came through.

which meant come saturday I could bake and use up the last of the ripening figs.

Fig Tart Recipe 

Set a fan forced oven at 170c

Short Crust pastry

I have used a very high quality store bought shortcrust pastry that I try to always have in my freezer. In this tart I used a combination of two flavours.

1 sheet of Dark Chocolate short crust pastry

1/2 a sheet of Vanilla bean sweet short crust pastry

prepare and cook the pastry shell to store bought (or your own recipe) instructions.

I used the dark chocolate short crust on the base and the vanilla short crust on the sides (refer to picture below)

Tart Filling

1 cup hazelnut meal

300g double thick cream

1/2 cup plain flour

6 table spoons brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla paste

3 teaspoons *fig Vino Cotto

mix all the above ingredients together in a bowl until it forms a paste. Spoon into the prepared tart shell and spread out evenly.

*instead of Vino Cotto you could use any liquids from water to a liquor such as Frangelico.

13 Figs

wash and cut the figs in half and place on top of tart filling, pushing down slightly.

Bake in a fan forced oven at 170c for 45 minutes or until the filling is set and browned (make sure to turn the tart for even browning). Take the tart out of the oven and let it cool before serving.

Serve with a dollop of vanilla bean ice cream 

I unfortunately didn't get a chance to take a proper picture of the finished result as the tart was taken straight from the oven to a friends house :)

here is my average Instagram photo below.

Happy Baking 

Xx Siobhan

procrastinating

Hi What have you been up to?

I have reorganised my fabric cupboard into colour order, reassessed projects that need finishing in a pile of order, arranged all my receipts, caught up on my fav blogs & been baking!

what I actually need to do is write invoices & finish the organised pile of projects :)

Wish me luck being more productive today

Xx Siobhan




Update 18th Oct 2011


*Recipe


set oven at 180 Celsius
30cm X 22cm baking tin, lined with baking paper (the jam sticks)


Base
250g butter
2/3 cup caster sugar
2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 egg yolks
1tsp vanilla paste


1 370g jar Raspberry jam


Topping
1 cup raw caster sugar
2 eggs lightly beaten
2 cups desiccated coconut




put the softened butter, caster sugar, plain flour, baking powder in a food processor and blend add the egg yolks & vanilla process till a soft dough forms.


Press it into the base of the lined tin.
Bake for 12-15 minutes till golden brown. Allow to cool (really really wait - otherwise it turns very messy) then spread the jam on top.


to make the topping, combine the caster sugar, egg and coconut - then spoon on top of the jam.


Bake for a further 25 minutes, cool in the tin, cut into slices.


Enjoy Xx

Tea Break

after all the cutting and sewing I think its time for food :) 

I made these little cheese cakes a few weeks ago for a school dinner and I was asked for the recipe, as usual its taken me a few weeks to get round to it....

This recipe is another one of my adapted over time ones, with changes and scrawls written all over the photocopy.

Baked Cheese Cake

this recipe is for a 20cm springform tin or you can make them in mini springform tins like I did

Base

125g sweet chocolate biscuit (tiny teddies) - crushed

125g Hazelnut meal

125g melted butter

combine biscuits, meal, butter and press mixture into a springform tin. Refrigerate.

Filling

300g sour cream

250g ricotta cheese

250g cream cheese - softened

3 eggs

1 cup raw caster sugar

1 tbs lemon rind

3 tbs lemon juice

1 tbs corn starch blended with

1 tbs water

handful of fresh or frozen raspberries

place cream cheese, ricotta,eggs , sugar, sour cream, lemon rind & juice & cornflour in a food processor and process until smooth. Pour mixture over base and sprinkle with raspberries.

Bake in a preheated oven at 150c oven for 40 minutes or until cheese cake is just set. Leave the cheese cake to cool completely then refrigerate till cheese cake is cold and firm.

enjoy!

more lone star instructions tomorrow :)

Xx Siobhan

Whats cooking

I've been cooking just a bit longer than I have been sewing. 

I cooked a lot as a kid - in retrospect it must have been a good way of keeping me occupied, no DVD/ computer games back in the late 70's early 80's in our house. 

I remember owning a video copy of the 'Life of Brian" and watching it over and over again then a few years later down the track it was "Pretty in Pink" "Sweet Sixteen" "Breakfast Club" and The big blue, Im sure there are many others but they stuck in my mind. 

My Kids own every DVD under the sun as well as PSP/PS3/DSi/Wii/Ipod Touch/digital kids TV and the computer. Bring back the good old days.

I went through fads with cooking - my poor family had months of choux pastry and lemon delicious pudding. I generally don't bake so much anymore, I have learnt not to - basically because I'm the one that eats it. Today with the cold and rain I went into baking mode and whipped up some choc hazelnut brownies, I haven't made them in years, the smell was sooo good - It also feels good to bake something - a bit like sewing or making anything I presume. Watching others enjoy it is a double pleasure.

I was very impatient and shot the pics at night in my kitchen with fluro lights - hence the yellow hue :)

Over the years I have sort of combined a few recipes together, I have it scralled on the back of some junk mail and safely in my recipe file, This recipe is gluten free.

Chocolate Hazelnut Brownie

(gluten free)

380g Dark eating chocolate

180g Butter

1cup Brown Sugar

3eggs

1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

1/ cup Hazelnuts

150g Hazelnut meal

1tsp Baking powder

Heat the oven to 180C fan forced, and line a 

20 X 30cm tin with baking paper.

Melt butter and chocolate in a bowl, leave for ten minutes to cool. Beat sugar and eggs until pale in colour and creamy, fold through the egg mixture into the chocolate mixture add vanilla and mix through hazelnuts. 

Add in hazelnut meal and baking powder mix gently. 

pour into tin and bake in the oven for 35 - 40 minutes. Its ready when the skewer comes out moist but not wet. Leave the brownie to cool completely in the tin (it will continue to cook once out of oven), then cut into squares and sift icing sugar over the top.

any nuts can go into these brownies, Macadamia nuts or walnuts make a nice change - what ever is on hand, Also the hazelnut meal can be changed to almond meal.

I like my Brownies crusty on the outside and gooey on the inside 

and with a nice warm milky coffee

Xx Siobhan