Re: Hummingbird Cake

Hey I forgot to say; when you're checking the cake, the edges should be slightly pulling away from the edge of the tin, the cake should spring back slightly when you press lightly on it and of course, a clean skewer, poked deep into the centre, should come out clean. If none of things happen, keep cooking and check about every 5 minutes or so until it's ready.

Bye bye :)

Hummingbird Cake

On my way home from work today, I treated myself to a little something from the baking accessories shop. I grabbed a flan tin and a fluted bundt tin. Goodies! Very excited about baking a lovely hummingbird cake, I set to it. The following is not my recipe, but I can't remember which intertubes site I got it from so I can't link it to a site or a blog. I did however, adapt what I wrote down as I was throwing it together tonight, just like to personalise things, you know.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups plain flour
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp bicarb soda
  
• 1/2 cup of nuts (walnuts,almonds,hazelnuts,pecan,macadamia,etc), roughly chopped
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp allspice
  
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup neutral oil (canola,grapeseed,vegetable)
• 2 eggs
  
• 1/2 cup chopped pineapple, including some juice
• 1 very ripe banana, mashed

Preheat the oven to 180C. Add all the ingredients together, mix well and pour into a greased cake tin. I used a 24cm fluted bundt tin, but I think that was a bit big, so you can go definitely go for a smaller tin. And any shape is fine. Cook for about 20 mins, but make sure to check after about 15 mins.
Mixin it up
My new tin is too big for the mixture!!!
Straight out of the oven, it rose a wee bit!
TA DAAAA!

That's it for now, until next time, bon apetit!

Returning after a haitus, sabbatical, extended leave but actually it's laziness

Hello! I was just thinking the other day that I really wanted to get back to the blog and post some of my adventures in cooking, so here I am. I'm currently sweating the onions on the very first dish that I will blog about. I'm not sure if it's a recipe, per se, I'm kind of just throwing together what I've got in the fridge. But I did make some some pasta from scratch. It's an easy peasy recipe from ABC's The Cook and The Chef website. Simple. I actually halved it because I'm just cooking for me and Leon. Once I rested the dough for about 30 mins, I rolled out 4 really thin pieces because I want to serve it like a giant free-form ravioli, of a sort. Also, I just used a rolling pin to roll my "ravioli" but it's easier if you're making fettucine, spaghetti, etc to use a pasta machine. Actually, it's a real stretch to name it ravioli, but at least it gives you an idea of what it will look like! Please bear in mind that my list of ingredients caters for 2 people without leftovers.

Ingredients: Pasta as per The Cook and The Chef website

half a large onion, thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, diced
1 medium of head broccoli, cut into small florets
1/4 to 1/2 cup veg stock*
1/3 to 2/3 cup cream*
pinch nutmeg
handful of almonds, either flaked or chopped
*with regards to the liquid measurements, I just kind of chucked it in without measuring! I think the ones I've listed is about right, but just play around with it and don't add it all at once.

Method:

• Toast the almonds on a dry pan until fragrant and not too brown, set aside.
• Sweat the onions over a med-low heat with a lid for about 5 mins. Remove lid, add garlic, continue cooking for another few minutes, stir frequently so that you don't burn the garlic.
• Once the onions and garlic are translucent and fragrant, add the broccoli. Add stock, cover, cook for about 5 mins.
• Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to the boil. Once boiling rapidly, cook the pasta, 2 pieces at a time, or if you have a small pot, 1 at a time. They should only take a few mins each so keep an eye on them. Once ready, simply keep them on the plates you will serve them on. I didn't drain them because I wanted the cooking water to add moisture.
• Remove lid from the broccoli, the stock should be steaming and the broccoli bright green. I didn't let the stock reduce so I could add only a little cream, but you could adjust that if you want to. Add cream and nutmeg and stir for a few minutes until well combined. Remove from heat and stir through almonds.
• I served mine as a giant ravioli, albeit free-form. It turned our pretty yum!

Photos:





So, hopefully the photos give you an idea of how it should look, if you want to make it like I did, but of course, you can do whatever you want!!!

I also want to show you a couple of pics of other things that I've cooked in the past few days......
- the photo of the top is a recipe from the fabulous foodie blog Italian Food Forever, the Cannara Onion Pizza and I added to that potatos, pecorino and mozzarella added. El gorgeouiso!
- the photo below is blueberry tart with creme patisserie from a recipe on The Cook and The Chef. It also uses Maggie Beer's Sour Cream Pastry, with 2 tbs of sugar added instead of the tart base that is part of the original recipe. I also folded through a punnet of blueberries instead of piling them on the top and I omitted the step that folds in whipped cream. In hindsight though, I would recommend cutting in the cream as it would make it less sweet.
Well, that's about it for now, I have some yummy hummingbird cake coming up and am planning an Italian feast very soon!

Wednesday 26 th September 2007

Hi there! Well, it's not 5 o'clock on a Saturday, but in fact 6 o'clock on a Wednesday. If anyone thinks my attempt at repost is completely gay, please, let me know! We finally made contact with our french friends Ben and Sarah and Mathieu by way of a camera and microphone and skype. They gave us a virtual tour of their fab little frenchy house, which was tres cool! If anyone out there wants to contact thru skype, let us know! I'm still working at the nursing home, which I'm hating more each day and really want to quit. Not very inspiring for someone who's only been doing the job six weeks, but there you go! Leon is good; his work is continuing in much the same way, particularly the loudness of the peeps he shares an office with!!! Take care, we'll be updating soon!

raining again

While it's almost day light savings time, it's raining again. It makes the city a lot bleaker, especially the view over the train lines.

Sofia and Peter stayed for a few days. This was punctuated with meals at Bhoj, L'Osteria and breakfast at the markets.

I'm sure something else has happened in the last month. It goes past so quickly that I forget.
- Ian and Kylie came back from their trip
- Vern, Ian and I went to see the Eagles defeat St Kilda at the Dome.
- I got a hair cut
- Renee got a placement at the nursing home

Paul and Lee will be here for a night or two while the Royal Melbourne Show is on. Brigid and John are lined up for 6-9 October.

minh minh

we went to minh minh in richmond last night with fellow experthites Ben and Anna. It is handily located next to north richmond station. We scored a table before it filled up, so we were pretty happy about it all.
Pork in plum sauce, chilli prawns, some duck thing and some veggies. yummo. We washed it down with a couple of reds, including an amberley and a pitchfork to remind us of our trip to Margret River with the mosman place crew. I'm pretty sure we'll be going back there before long (nice one Mitch!).

status update

OK; it's now been a couple of months since our last confession.
Renee has been going to class as part of her apprenticeship (last day of class tomorrow before a 3 week placement at a nursing home in Flemington -- pretty handy). She is pretty excited/happy.

Over the past 2 months we've had Renee's sister, Renee's parents and Ben stay over. Brigid will be here tomorrow night and Sophia and Peter a few weeks down the track. Somewhere in there Courtney and then Andy/Wal/Troll/Lungsy visited Melbourne.

We now have a couch, a table and low and behold an internet connection (Vigin Broadband/wireless running at 632 kbps on the 15th floor).

Work has been picking up in intensity, but I think I'm getting the hang of it all.
We haven't been to the pool or gym for ages... eh.

This is a night time view out the window:
This is a daytime view out the window:


cya