Cream of Pumpkin Soup

On Sunday Mum, my two sisters and myself (plus the Minion) went to the annual Collector pumpkin festival! (Collector is the town). Came away with some beautiful fresh pumpkins and organic potatoes (so easy to clean! Shows you how un-fresh the supermarket ones really are o.0), so clearly pumpkin soup was in order. Also, I discovered in the making that Boyo actually likes pumpkin soup (he merely tolerates most other soups), which is exciting to know! Had cream that needed using and celery leaves that were otherwise going into the bin, and here is the result... :)

Ingredients
1 red onion, finely chopped
2t crushed garlic
splash of olive oil
1/2t cumin
1/4t nutmeg
1/4t harissa
1/2t garlic salt
4c stock
1.5c water
1/2 queensland blue pumpkin, cubed about 1/2 - 1 inch
1 sweet potato, cubed about 1/2 - 1 inch
2 med-lrg potatoes, cubed about 1/2 - 1 inch
1/2 bunch of celery leaves and trimmings, finely chopped
100mL cream (I used thickened, but any would work)

Recipe
Saute onion and garlic in oil. Add spices and stir over heat for 30 seconds or until fragrant. Add stock and water and bring to boil. Add pumpkin, sweet potato and potato. Return to boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. Add celery leaves. Simmer 10 minutes or until vegies are soft. Puree, then stir through cream. Serve optionally with a little fresh black pepper and a dollop of sour cream, with hot buttered sourdough toast on the side.

This is one of the best pumpkin soups I've had (fresh ingredients make a difference, I suspect :D) and I'll definitely be making this one again. The recipe is going into my brown recipe journal that is home to all my standby favourites ;) Yay!

IC:E Winter Warm Up - Hot Chocolate Cupcakes

This is our first ever Iron Cupcake challenge. Yay! The theme for this month is Winter Warm Up, which is probably fantastic if you're in the northern hemisphere, but hey, I'm sweltering away in a heatwave here! All of which meant it was a little challenging to strain my memory back to those months of coldness and recall what it is that I use to warm up when it's really truly icy.

Mostly I use the central heating. But that didn't really inspire any great cupcake ideas :D

So instead, I opted for hot chocolate, because warming up from the inside out is usually the best course of action. My other alternative when I'm really desperate is washing the dishes, because the hot waters warms up the blood in my hands (because the veins there are closest to the skin, so the blood is most affected by the warm water - also why your hands swell when you're hot, so the blood can try to cool down. End today's biology lesson O:)), and again, washing dishes didn't really inspire anything brilliant for a cupcake, though I really must try sometime. Imagine a cupcake covered in soap-sud look-alikes, for example! So cool!

*ahem*

Right. Hot chocolate it is, because I don't drink coffee (love the smell, hate the taste), and because hot chocolate isn't interesting enough, it has to be the real old-fashioned traditional hot chocolate. And when I say 'traditional', I mean the Aztecs who invented the stuff ;) They drank their chocolate spiced with chili, so I decided I'd add some to the cupcakes :)

The Recipe

1 2-inch chilli, finely chopped

1/3c boiling water
1c butter
1c chopped chocolate (I used dark, I think it gives mud cakes a richer flavour)
1c self raising flour
1/2c cocoa
1/2t bicarb soda
1 1/4c caster sugar
4 eggs
1/2c milk

Preheat oven to 160C. Line the bottoms of two 12-hole muffin pans. Pour the boiling water over the chilli and let it stand for five minutes. Melt the butter and chocolate with the chilli-infused water. Sift the flour, cocoa and bicarb. Stir in the sugar. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and stir in the eggs, milk and chocolate mix until combined. Bake in a cupcake pan for ~20mins, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

To assemble:
Cool cakes in pan for 5 mins then turn out onto wire rack. Once completely cool, break about half the cupcakes in half and put a half cake into the bottom of some tea cups and mugs. Stack whole cupcakes on top until the cake reaches about 1cm (1/3in?) below the rim. Press down firmly.

Whip 150mL of cream with 1t vanilla essence and 1T icing sugar. Spread the cakes liberally with the cream then sprinkle with drinking chocolate or other decorations.

The Results

Can we all say oh my goodness delicious?! I seriously think the aftertaste of these gorgeous critters is EXACTLY like a chocolate milkshake! So much squee!! The chili isn't really strong - if you wanted more spice you could easily double the amount I added - but it's enough to give the cake a warm hint and that delicious aftertaste. Yumyumyum. I'll definitely be making these again :D

The Prizes

Part of the contest rules are that I have to show you the prizes we're competing for. Totally tragic, I know :D So, these are the fantastic prizes/sponsors of the wonderful Iron Cupcake event (yes, I love my adjectives today).

Our Generous IronCupcake:Earth Prize Providers:

• The Demy™ by Key Ingredient
• Hello, Cupcake by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson
• Bella Cupcake Couture
• Cupcake Stackers by Gourmac
• The Cake Mix Doctor Returns! by Anne Byrne
• Beautiful Baking Liners by Vestli House
• Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Bakery & Cupcakey Supply

Voting will open next week. I'll post a link up when it's time, and also put a link right here :) In the mean time, happy cupcaking!

Book Cakes - Day One

Welcome back to our redecorated blog! This month is certainly a time of beginnings and endings for me. However, a lot of the beginnings and ends are meeting nicely in the middle - for example, I recently finished work at my old job. To celebrate, I made book cakes, which are truly awesome B-) And because of that ending, I now have something very shiny to share in this re-beginning of the blog! :D Things balance out in the end. Or the beginning. Whichever. O:)

Anyway, book cakes. I haven't baked in a long while, and I was getting antsy to try something fancy again, and I thought that my last day at work would be the final excuse. I pondered for a while what I should make - clearly a cake, but how, and in what form? And then I came up with the perfect idea: Book cakes! I worked at a library storehouse, you see, so this was the natural choice.



I googled pictures of book cakes, found two that inspired my idea, and armed with my trusty Planet Cake cookbook that I got recently for my birthday, I set off on my cake-making adventure, chronicalled below.

Be warned. This is a loooooooong post. In fact, I might post it in several installments, for the sake of all of our brains :D It took me several days to do, given things need resting overnight, etc, so I'll break it up by days. Today, the recipe.

The Recipe

Step one: Shop for ingredients. Make sure you have consulted the recipe BEFORE you do this, lest you seriously underestimate the amount of chocolate you need and have to visit the supermarket TWICE in one evening before making the cake.

Step two: Make the ganache. Glory in its beauty. Keel over from the sheer insane richness of the smell. Put it in the back of the fridge to set overnight and vow never to eat chocolate again because it is so RICH.

Step three: Make cake. Get cake out of oven late at night (because you had to visit the shops twice, so were late starting the cooking) and cry because it burnt. Give up and go to bed, promising to make it all better in the morning.

Chocolate Ganache*
1.2kg (2lb 10oz) dark chocolate, finely chopped (53-63% cocoa)
600mL pure cream (not thickened; make sure what you're buying has no gelatin in it)

Chop the chocolate. Please, for all our sakes, use something automatic. It took me 40 minutes to finely chop 6 blocks of premium cooking chocolate; I blistered the knuckle of the finger holding the knife from bashing it against the chopping board a thousand times too often, and the first two fingers of my left hand were bruised for the next three days from pushing down in the back of the knife blade.

Bring the cream to boiling point over the stove (don't let it actually boil). Pour it over the chocolate and mix with a balloon whisk until smooth. DON'T use electric, this time, because an electric whisk will incorporate too much air. We want thick and creamy, not fluffy.

Allow to cool completely and leave to set overnight.

* Pfah. DO NOT TRUST RECIPES. They are tricksy beasts. I looked at this and went - wow, 1.2 KILOS of chocolate? That seems like rather a lot. But the book specifically said that it was enough to cover one of their cakes plus a little left over in case of mistakes.

I don't know about you, but I don't think HALF of the ganache is a little. That forty minutes of chopping and bruised fingering? It only needed to be twenty minutes!!!


Chocolate Mud Cake
220g butter

220g dark chocolate, chopped (I used chocolate drops so I didn't need to chop)

25g coffee granules (I skipped this; not a fan of coffee)
125g Self Raising Flour
125g plain (all purpose) flour
50g unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tspn bicarb soda
480g caster (superfine) sugar
4 eggs, lightly beaten
7 tspn vegetable oil (I used canola)
100mL buttermilk (I used plain ordinary milk)

Preheat oven to 160C/315F. Grease 22cm/9in round or 20cm/8in square cake tin. Line the base and sides with a collar that extends 2cm (3/4in) above the top of the tin. (Ha, totally forgot to line the base, but it was all fine). Melt butter, chocolate, coffee and 160mL of water in a saucepan over a low heat.

Sift together the flours, cocoa and bicarb. Stir in sugar and make a well in the centre. Add the combined egg, oil and buttermilk and the chocolate mix. Stir with a large spoon until completely combined. Pour into pan and bake for 1 hr 40 mins** or until skewer comes out clean (though might be still sticky) and leave cake in pan until cold.

** About the baking time. Recall, at this point, that I'd spent an hour making the ganache and had the bruised and blistered fingers to prove it. Recall also that given I'd been at work all day, the cake was set to finish baking at about 11pm. Now come with me to the moment where I went to check the cake, after an hour and a half, just to be safe - and it was charcoal black and smelled ruined. I cried. Gar-stabbity! So. Make sure you know your oven, and check the cake regularly in the last half hour.

And that, dear readers, is day one. Tune in (AT SOME TIME) for the next installment!

Braised Chicken with Creamy Leek Sauce

This is not an original recipe, but where it originally came from I can only guess. Enjoy!

Chicken in a Creamy Leek Sauce

1 bunch of leeks (usually a bundle has 3-4 stalks)
1 boneless/skinless chicken breast per person
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 medium cloves of garlic- crushed
1 can chicken broth (low sodium)
1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder to taste

Halve the leeks and cut into 1/2 inch - 1 inch slices. Wash thoroughly.


Pat chicken dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat oil and 1/2 tablespoon butter in a 10-inch nonstick skillet over moderately high heat until foam subsides, then brown chicken on both sides, about 4 minutes total. Transfer to a plate.



Add half of chicken broth and all the garlic to skillet and deglaze by boiling over high heat, stirring and scraping up brown bits, until reduced to about 2 tablespoons, 1 to 2 minutes.



Add leeks and remaining 2 butter and salt and pepper to taste, then simmer over moderately low heat, covered, stirring occasionally, until leeks are wilted, about 10 minutes.


Stir in rest of broth. Top leeks with chicken breasts and juices from plate, then gently simmer over low heat, covered, until leeks are tender and chicken is just cooked through, about 8 minutes .



Transfer chicken breasts to a plate. Add cream to skillet and boil over high heat, stirring occasionally, until thickened slightly, 1 to 2 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with crusty bread or over rice.

Dead Easy Scones

So, my sister was at a play last weekend, and they had scones for afternoon tea. She mentioned this, and the general consensus from everyone in the room was that we wanted scones... So, I went and made scones. The recipe is a mishmash of a couple of recipes I found on the internet.

The Recipe

2c self raising flour
1/4c castor sugar
1/4t salt
2/3c cream
2/3c lemonade

Sift the flour, sugar and salt. Fold in the cream and lemonade. Don't over-mix, or the scones will become tough. I mixed until it was just combined - there were a couple of small streaks of flour still. The dough will be quite wet still.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Pat it down to about 3/4 inch thick (you might need to use some more flour to do this so it doesn't stick to your hands!). I used a 7cm (~1.5 inch?) cutter, dipped in flour after every second cut, to cut out the scones. Remember to press down in one smooth, firm movement, and don't twist as you remove the cutter (can cause the scones to twist in the oven).

Place scones on a light greased tray; they won't spread much so you can put them reasonably close. Bake for 12 mins at 210C in fan forced oven, or 220C in a non-fan forced.

Remove from oven and eat hot with whipped cream and jam!

The Results

Gorgeous! The are the most light, fluffy scones ever. I think I was being a bit paranoid in terms of over-mixing, which probably helps o.O :) If you're more into dense, heavy scones, either don't make these or mix them a bit more - which I'm going to try. But if you're into light and fluffy - yum! They browned up quite a bit on the outside, and didn't rise a lot, but they were yum :)

Plum and Passionfruit Cupcakes

So, after deliberating all night, I finally figured how I wanted to do these. I remembered some other cupcakes that had a dual flavour combination, and thought about how they'd balanced the flavours... And these are what I came up with. Yes, they're tomato and basil cupcakes. And despite the fact that I can't stand raw tomato, I'm intrigued by these cupcakes. They're just the type of crazy thing I'd do.

As with the tomato cupcakes, the plum and passionfruit ones are not something that you can throw together in half an hour - though if you wanted to just make the cupcakes, I'd wholeheartedly support you as they're gorgeous.

As the recipe stands, it took me about seven hours to complete, with lots of waiting time and washing of dishes (and making of dinner) in between.

The truffles recipe is based on one I found at Gastronomicon. The cake recipe is my standard wet-ingredient cake which I modified from one I found ages ago on the internet. The glaze is based on the glaze from the tomato cupcakes at Cupcake Project, though mine's a lot runnier, and the cream... Well, it's just cream and passionfruit, after all.


Truffles

170g white chocolate, chopped
1/2c double thick cream
1/4c passionfruit pulp
1 1/2 T butter

Melt butter and chocolate. Stir through cream and passionfruit. Put in freezer for 4 hours, or overnight.

Scoop the ganache into balls with a melon baller or a teaspoon. Freeze again for 2 hours.

I was impatient waiting for the mixture to freeze the first time, and made it into balls after just two hours. Consequently, it took about three hours for the balls to freeze J

Melt some white chocolate. Dip the ganache balls into the chocolate and roll to cover. Place on a tray, and place in fridge to allow chocolate to set.

I think I just have issues with truffles. I've tried them once before, and the insides refused to set even after a couple of days. I decided it was cause I'd used plain cream, rather than double. So this time I bought double cream especially.

The insides got to a reasonable level of set-ness, but when it came to 'enrobing' them... Ick. The first three were okay, but the ganache melted so quickly that by the time I came to pick number four up it was a gooey lump. I still coated it in chocolate, which worked okay because the chocolate set, allowing me to recoat it without fear of melting, and resulting in some okay-ish looking truffles... But it was incredibly messing. I wonder if I should try to be patient and wait over night next time...

I still have rather a lot of ganache balls left that I couldn't be bothered to coat (I only did enough for the cupcakes), so maybe I'll try those tomorrow.

Plum Sauce

340g plums, de-stoned and roughly chopped
1/4c sugar
1/3c water

Stir over heat until sugar dissolves – about 1 minutes. Bring to the boil then simmer uncovered for 6 minutes. Allow to cool for 2 minutes, then puree if necessary (I didn't).

This makes slightly over the necessary cup. I added the leftovers into the glaze.

Cupcakes

1/4c sugar
1/2c margarine
1 egg
1/4t vanilla extract
1c plum sauce
1 1/2 c plain flour
1t baking soda

Cream sugar and margarine. Beat in egg and vanilla extract. Alternately fold in plum sauce and flour/soda mix, some at a time, till all mixed.

Half fill cupcake tins, bake at 180C for 12mins. Tops will still be light when cooked. Cool on rack after 3 mins.

I got 19 cupcakes out of this, although they didn't rise as much as I was expecting - hardly at all. However, given the sweetness of the overall creation, this is probably a good thing.

Cream

mL cream
1/4 tin passionfruit

Whip cream. Fold in passionfruit.

May benefit from some icing sugar.

Glaze

1c honey
2 plums, chopped

Bring to the boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Cool for 10-15 minutes.

I had a whole honey-jar full of this left over. I guess I'll use it on ice cream or something, though it's not as scrumptious as the plum sauce.

Assembly

Cut a small cone out of the top of the cupcake and hollow the cupcake out a little. Fill with passionfruit cream; replace top. Dip cupcake upside down into the plum glaze – twist as you bring it out to catch drips. Allow first layer of glaze to soak into cake, then redip. Top with a truffle & serve. Mmm.

Don't they look awesomely shiny with the glaze? The colour is stunning, especially compared to the rather bland colour of the un-glazed cake. And surprisingly, they hold the second layer of glaze well - three hours later they look just as glazed.

Results

My first reaction when I tasted the batter was: ho hum… my goodness these are good! The batter, which just tasted like batter on first contact, has this amazing plummy kick to it which is just… amazing!

Fresh out of the oven and I just couldn’t resist, even though I knew there wasn’t many… So I only had a third of one. And they are just as good as the batter promised. A non-descript grey colour with flecks of red, these are the ugly ducklings of cupcakes – they taste SO good. The plum flavour is absolutely perfect, a great balance between tart and sweet, and you can taste it through the whole cupcake, not just if you happen to get a piece of plum. I just love the plum sauce, and will definitely make it again even just as an ice cream topping…

So now I’m wondering about the watermelon and pineapple cupcakes… Does this recipe just need saucy ingredients? I wonder how a watermelon sauce or a pineapple sauce would work… Would it work? Thoughts, thoughts…

…back to the cupcakes. The problem I had at this point was that the cupcakes were SO good I didn’t want to tamper with them and risk making them worse… Even the thought of icing them was scary. But I had a plan to follow, so follow I did despite my doubts.

As it turns out, they are absolutely brilliant. The passionfruit cream, which I feared might be too overpowering, was exactly strong enough to combat the strength of the plum flavour, and the glaze, which was a bit sickly on its own, was just right on the cake. And the truffles? To die for… However, a word of warning - these are sweet cupcakes. If sweet's not your thing, stick to the cake and cream combo and skip the glaze (very sweet) and truffles (good until about number five, then sickening... But then, I can't eat too much white chocolate at the best of times.)

Regardless, I would definitely make these again.

Definitely.

Cream Potato Bake

Yeah, not a cupcake. But this recipe is so simple, and so utterly delicious, that I just had to share. I have no idea about quantities, but it's not difficult to figure out.

And a word of warning: this recipe is not for the diet-conscious :)


The Recipe

Potatoes
Cream (about 600mL?)
Cajun spice mix
Cheddar or Tasty cheese, grated.

Thinly slice enough potatoes to cover the bottom of a cooking dish overlapped. See the picture for a much better explanation :)
Cover the potatoes with cream - and I do mean cover. Sprinkle liberally with cajun spice mix. Don't be afraid to be liberal - the cream absorbs a lot of the heat from the spice. See the third picture for an indication of how much I use.
Top with grated cheese.
Bake at 200C for about 30 minutes, or until potatoes are cooked.

The Results

YUM! Really. The potatoes absorb some of the cream and have a wonderful creamy (funny that) texture. The cream and spice go perfectly, and the cheese is just the perfect final touch.

The only thing I would suggest is potentially opting for a lower fat cheese. The first time I made this it was great. The second time, it was still great, but a lot of the oil/fat from the cream and cheese leaked out of them, so to speak, and hung around in the bottom of the pan. Which was okay for the first eating, but it made the leftovers a little odd.