Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Recipe Successes & Disasters Video

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Caramel Mud Cake

I decided to finally step away from chocolate and do an all time favourite of mine. My love for Caramel Mud Cake started from Michael's Patisserie. I had never bought a cake from a store beside Coles because I was so used to my Mum or me making everything from scratch. I was under the impression that homemade cakes were always better until... I found the caramel Mud Cake from Michael’s. Since then I've always thought of making my own and seeing if I could beat the infamous store bought cake.

Today is the day! Wish me luck!

(Little bit fancy!)

Ingredients

Cooking oil spray, for greasing

250g butter, chopped

2 cups brown sugar

1 cup milk

200g white cooking chocolate, chopped

1 ½ cups plain flour

½ cup self-raising flour

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 eggs, lightly beaten

BUTTERCREAM ICING

¼ cup caster sugar

2 Tbsp water

¼ cup pure cream, warmed

2 tsp vanilla extract

200g unsalted butter, chopped, at room temperature

2 cups icing sugar mixture

Method

Preheat oven to 150C. Grease a 20 x 7 cm round cake tin with cooking oil spray and line with baking paper, allowing a 2cm overhang.
Put butter, sugar and milk in a medium saucepan over a medium heat and cook until butter has melted, stirring occasionally. Add chocolate and whisk until smooth. Do not boil. There will still be a few small specks of chocolate in the mixture. Transfer to a large bowl and set aside for 15 minutes to cool to room temperature.
Sift flours over cooled mixture and stir to combine. Add vanilla extract and egg and whisk until smooth.
Pour mixture into prepared tin and bake for 1 hour. Loosely cover with foil and bake for 1 hour. Loosely cover with foil and bake for a further 55 - 60 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Set aside in a tin to cool to room temperature. Using a serrated knife, trim off the top cap of the cake, still leaving a slight dome.
To make buttercream icing, put caster sugar and water in a small saucepan over a medium heat and bring to the boil. Cook, without stirring, for 6 minutes or until caramel turns light amber. Remove pan from heat. Add cream and vanilla extract and stir to combine. Set aside for 20 minutes to cool.
Put butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and fluffy. Add icing sugar and beat for 2 minutes. Add caramel and beat for a further 2 minutes.
Transfer cake to a serving plate. Spread buttercream icing over top and side of cake in a thick layer to coat.

Recipe and image from: Better Homes and Gardens August Magazine, Page 36-37.

Review

This cake was MODERATELY HARD. There are lots of elements to the cake and it requires some pre learned cooking skills (such as when caramel is form from melting sugar). Overall the cake was delicious! My Mum loved it the most and she hardly likes caramel or mud cake. I definitely want to make it again because I feel like I made some mistakes within the recipe which then changed the final taste. I don’t think it beat the Michael’s Patisserie version but I’m willing to keep trying!

Recipe Amendments/ Recommendations

My amendments and recommendations are as follows:

In a fan forced preheated oven, watch the cake carefully because it cooks a lot faster than the recipe states.

There is a lot of icing so get creative with decorating

Do not store in the fridge as the cake dries out.

An overall success!

- Adelaide

(The final product - with a little extra decoration!)

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Beef Tacos

Thought of having something tasty during my study break for this long day of studying. Having a nice taco kit in the pantry helped me decide what to make for lunch this long day. Tacos are one of my favourite foods but quite messy as well.

Recipe and image taken from- http://www.oldelpaso.co.uk/recipes/crunchy-beef-tacos/878bc334-c79c-49c1-bf3e-8e660c1a7263/

Ingredients

1 x Old El Paso Original Stand ‘n’ Stuff Taco Kit
500g minced beef
125g grated cheese
2 x tomatoes
1 x lettuce
Oil

Kit contains: 10 x Old El Paso Crunchy Flat Bottom Taco Shells, 1 x Old El Paso Original Taco Spice Mix, 1 x Old El Paso Taco Salsa

Method

1. Add a splash of oil and heat a pan. Brown the mince before draining off the excess liquid.

2. Sprinkle in the Old El Paso Original Spice Mix for Tacos and add 100ml water.

3. Give it a good stir and when it starts to bubble, reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally until reduced to a lovely rich, tasty filling.

4. Pre-heat oven to 180°C (160°C for fan assisted ovens), gas mark 4.

5. Place the Flat Bottom Taco Shells open end down on a baking sheet or some foil and heat for 2-3 minutes. Microwaves can vary but it’ll take about a minute for 6 and less for fewer

Review and amendments

Overall, beef tacos never fail to satisfy my taste buds. They are filling and depending on what toppings you add it can be a healthy meal as well. I did modify it quite a bit as I used different tacos, which weren’t the flat bottom ones. They still have the same taste but it is messier as you cannot sit it down.

I did add 1 small chopped onion to the frypan and cooked them until they turned transparent before I added the minced beef. The beef thickens quite quick once the spice mix and water is added so be prepared to turn it off once it does.

One thing that always seems to happen is while heating up the taco shells they burn really fast. So I advise to keep an eye out and only leave it for a minute. Remember you are not cooking the taco shells but merely warming them up so they are nice and crunch for serving.

Overall, I rate this recipe a 9/10.

-Lisa Alhage

Shrimp and Snow Pea Stir Fry

Ingredients:

1/2 cup chicken stock

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon Sriracha sauce (more if you like things spicy!)

1/4-1/2 teaspoon ground ginger (I'm not crazy about the flavor of ginger, so I used close to 1/4 teaspoon. If you like it, though, by all means use more. You really can't mess this up)

1 teaspoon corn starch

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1/2 pound snow peas

1 kg medium shrimp, shelled and deveined with the tails removed

Chopped scallions

Steamed rice for serving

Method:

For the stir fry portion of the meal, I started by heating some oil over medium-high heat until it was shimmering. then I added some chopped garlic and cooked for about 2 minutes.

When the garlic started to smell amazing, I added the snow peas and cooked for about 2 minutes more, until they were bright green and a little flimsy, but not too soft I think real recipe writers call this "crisp-tender."

As this was happening I combined a mixture of soy sauce, Sriracha, ground ginger, chicken stock, and corn starch in a small bowl and set aside. Then I added 1 pound of peeled shrimp to the hot skillet.

I let the shrimp cook for about 4 minutes, until they were starting to turn pink but were not cooked all the way through, then I added some chopped scallions and the soy sauce mixture.

I cooked this until the sauce had thickened and the shrimp were cooked through.

I served the shrimp and snow peas on top rice, with a little bit of scallions on top.

Review:

The Thai hot chili sauce is a revelation. I can't believe it has taken me this long to try it. If you like spicy food, you must have this condiment in your arsenal. I put it on leftover steamed rice the next day for lunch and was floored.

Cook rice according to package instructions. I do this by bringing 2 cups of liquid (in this case, chicken stock) to a boil, then adding 1 cup of rice and stirring once. Then I place a tightly fitting lid on top, reduce the heat to almost nothing, meaning I look at the little light that tells me a heating element is on, and I turn it as low as it can go without that light going out, and cook until the rice has absorbed all of the liquid, usually about 20 minutes.

Recipe Amendments/Recommendations:

Aside from my new found Sriracha love, what I really loved about this recipe is that it comes together in the time it takes to steam a cup of rice, which for me is about 20 minutes. Even better than that, it doesn't taste like it. It tastes like you must have spent a great deal of time and energy creating something so delicious, when really the most time consuming and energy requiring thing I had to do was peel a pound of shrimp. It's literally throw in ingredients, stir, throw again, stir again, serve on rice.

One-bowl Chocolate Cake

The greatest accompaniment to good food is great people to share it with!

Once a week my closest group of friends catch up to make sure we remain sane during the crazy uni semester. The night is usually filled with junk food and gossip, but this week I decided to mix it up a little and make a one-bowl wonder.

It looks incredible and hopefully all the critics will think it tastes just as great. I’m a sucker for desserts with chocolate and whipped cream and this recipe adds a little something extra special, honeycomb!

Wish me luck!

(Hopefully it looks as yummy as this!)