Apple cinnamon muffins

I used to looooovvveeeee baking.

Now, I can really not be bothered.

I like eating the things but the making of the things doesn't seem worth it.

Unless it's easy.

Unless it's quick.

Here is a recipe I have tried.  You only need one bowl.  There is no creaming of the butter and sugar (which is like, the worst).  They are delicious.  They have fruit in them, so they are healthy.  It is not my recipe, I am literally copying it for you from the source (here), with my mods.

apple cinnamon muffins

Ingredients

• 300g (2 cups) plain flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 150g (3/4 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
• 2 medium (about 375g) Granny Smith apples, cored, peeled, chopped 
• 125g butter or margarine, melted, cooled
• 2 eggs, lightly whisked
• 185mls (3/4 cup) milk

The recipe also calls for raisins, but gross no way.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Prepare your ingredients. You will need 12 medium (125mls/ 1/2 cup) muffin pans. Line the pans with paper muffin cases because this is easiest and less mess and you can get pretty polka dot cases from Coles. 
2. Put the plain flour, baking powder and cinnamon together into a large bowl. Stir in the brown sugar and apples  until well combined.
3. Whisk together the butter or margarine, eggs and milk until well combined. 
4. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Apparently it gets tough if you mix too much *shrug*
5. Spoon the mixture into the muffin pans.
6. Bake the muffins in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until golden and cooked through.

The recipe says they keep for 1 day, but I have eaten them all week long and they are still tasty.  Don't hate.

MMmmMmmMmmmm

~Tanya

herman the german

I was recently given a Herman the German Friendship Cake starter!  So frickin exciting!

Not heard of a friendship cake before?  Neither had I!  Herman is a sour dough conconction, which when given you to, you care for and feed for 10 days, before dividing into four portions, three for friends and one for yourself to bake into a yummy cake!

If Herman stops bubbling, he dies. 

Herman's growth a day after feeding.  Aww they grow up so fast!

Herman mach 1 ended his life as a lemon cake.  I changed the basic recipe (on the instructions) by omitting the apples, raisins and cinnamon, and adding the rind of 3 lemons to the batter, and whipped up a 2/3 quantity of this microwave lemon curd recipe.  I put 2/3 of the batter into the tin, followed by a layer of the lemon curd (even then I didn't use all of it, maybe 3/4) and then scooping the rest of the batter over the top.

You need to cook this sucker for a LOOONNNGGG time!  I estimate about 2 and a half hours!  It might be my oven. 

However, the result is an extremely dense and moist cake.  Even 3 days later it was still just as good.  The top was super crunchy, and the lemon curd gave it a delicious tartness throughout the cake.

I was due to distribute my 3 Herman babies on the Thursday before Good Friday.  Nobody wanted him!  Well, 1 person wanted him!  Everyone else was going on 'holiday' and couldn't handle the 'commitment'. So I took him home to start the process again.

Herman mach 2 ended his life as a choc-berry cake.  Inspired by one of the recipies on the site, I added 1/4 cup cocoa, about 160 gr choc chips and a good couple of handfuls of frozen mixed berries.  Again the cooking time for this was astronomical (like, 3 hours!) but again, the cake turned out amazingly moist.

I brought this to a work morning tea, and was totally chuffed to see heaps of people going back for seconds, and one colleague pronouncing it the 'best cake ever!'  We all know how my sense of self worth is directly proportionate to the appreciation of my cookery by others, so that was a good day.

I thought the friendship cake was a totally nifty idea.  If you like it but haven't been given a Herman starter, why not make your own?

~Tan

Cheat's Lemon Tart Recipe

I've gotten quite lazy with my baking.  But I still really love cake.  Dilemma.  I'm constantly on the lookout for tasty cake recipes which avoid all that tedious creaming of the butter and sugar, and the fewer ingredients the better. 

I'm a big lemon tart fan.  However, I can think of almost nothing worse than battling with short crust pastry.   It seriously takes all day.  So I call this the cheat's lemon tart recipe.  This is a gem of a recipe - I think it was originally from Better Homes and Gardens or something like that (disguised as the much less appetising 'lemon tea cake').  You get a lovely crumbly crusty type cake base, yummy lemon curd filling and crumble topping.  So not quite a tart but still, lemon curd.  The filling uses pretty much the same ingredients as the base, but with added lemon. 

I always always get tons of compliments when I make this.  The only downside is it requires a bit of heavy machinery - you need to pull out your food processor - but you can do all your tidying up while you leave the crumb mixture in the fridge!

Cheat's Lemon Tart Recipe

Ingredients

• 375g self-raising flour
• 250g sugar
• 175g butter
• 2 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
• 4 lemons, zest and juice 

Method

1. Bung 350g of the flour, 150g of the sugar and 100g of the butter in a food processor, and process until it's combined.
2. Add 1 egg and 1 egg yolk and again process until combined.  I have no idea what would happen if you just added that whole extra second egg.  I'm going to try this next time, because I never get around to making those merangues which I intend to do with spare egg whites...
3. Your mixture will be very dry and crumbly.  Spread out some cling wrap, and pour the mixture onto it.  Then grap the four corners of the plastic and try to smoosh it together (I find I need to wrap it a second time with cling wrap to keep it together).  Then chuck it in the fridge.
4. While this is in the fridge, preheat the oven to 180 C and grease and line a 20-ish cm round cake tin.  Mine is springform because that's how I roll.
5. Then make your lemon curd by placing the lemon juice and rind, the remaining sugar (100g) and butter (75g) into a saucepan.  Once the butter is melted add the other egg and yolk (see my comments re wasted eggs above) and whisk over heat until combined, then add the remaining flour (25g) and whisk until thickened.  This should happen pretty quickly. 
6. Get your crumb mixture out and dump two thirds of it into your prepared pan, and smoosh it down, keeping a slighly raised egdge.  Pour in the lemon curd, then sprinkle over the rest of the crumbs.
7. Bake for 30-35 mins, or until golden on the top and serve!!

nom nom nom

And it's good for a couple of days after you make it, but mine never lasts that long.
(I think I get extra points for this post because I avoided the title 'when life gives you lemons'!)

Mochachino Brownies

If it isn't blogged about, it didn't happen right?  Yipes, I better share with you the fact that I did some baking!!

My last three attempts at brownies have failed.  They were less a brownie and more a brownie-batter puddle.  Burnt on the outside, not cooked on the inside.  I maintain it's my oven - it's way too hot.

Anyway, this time, a new recipe and success!  I give you, my slightly tweaked version of Mochachino Brownies

Brownies
115 g butter
115 g chocolate (I used old gold)
2 tbsp strong coffee (I brewed up a Ristretto pod)
250 g caster sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 eggs, beaten
100 g milk choc chips (original recipe said 55g of choc chips and 55 g walnuts, however my other half does not like nuts so I just added more chips)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C, grease and line a sqaure baking tin.
2. Place the butter, chocolate and coffee into a saucepan and melt until smooth.  Cool slightly (I let it cool for the amount of time it took me to gather the rest of my ingredients).
3. Whisk in the sugar, eggs and cinnamon.
4. Mix in the flour (I continued to use my whisk) and stir in the choc chips.  
5. Pour into the prepared tin, bake for 30-35 mins, apparently until firm but moist inside.  Mine was probably in for closer to 40, but this was purely because my oven timer didn't go off when it was supposed to.  So mine was a bit black on the top.  But it is still ridiculously moist, plus I hid the blackness with icing. 
6. Allow to cool before icing.

Icing
115 g white chocolate
1 tbsp coffee (I had left overs from that brewed above)
2 tbsp milk
175 g icing sugar, sifted

1. Melt white choc with milk and coffee.  
2. Sift in the icing sugar and mix together (I used my whisk).
3. Spread over your brownies.  My icing was quite runny, so I popped it into the fridge for a while to set a bit before using.  Then it's a lovely consistency and won't drip everwhere.

I cut mine into 25 pieces.  They're super rich, so try not to have more than say, 5 :D

CBC - 27 May

The Crocher Biatch Club (or CBC) convened yesterday for a day of catching up with masterchef, baking, gassbagging, cuddling of furbabies, eating and of course, crochet.  It's funny how little crochet I find myself doing during CBC. 

This time, we met at Rhon's.   Rhon and I both needed to make something for morning tea at work, so we utilised CBC to do some baking.  Rhon made a delectable lemon slice with passionfruit icing, and I made this almond, chocolate and date torte.

As for crochet, Rhon was freestlyin' some fingerless gloves in a retina-burning hot pink cotton.  Ange was bordering some granny squares and I showed her how to join-as-you-go, and am proud to say that I had a very proficient student!  (I feel I need to mention here that those blue and green squares are most definitely not Ange's choice in colours.  She's making this particular afghan for her hubbie, and Ange thinks these colours are repulsive!  LOL.  I think they look great, and she has done a smashing job!).  Ange is also getting her ripple on.  For my part, I continued to work on my baby set.

There were lots of cuddles going on with both Aslan and Vervainn, who I introduced you to last time.   A good thing too, because it was flippin' freezing.  Thanks for keeping my feet warm Assie!!

Thanks for a lovely day gals, see you at my place next time!

xox

Tan

[Linking up with Make Something Monday, just for the hell of it!]

What time is it?

 Cake time!!

schmowzow!

My sister and I (and the rest of the internet) love Adventure Time.  She had a birthday recently, so I made this awesome cake for her!

Inspired by this one, my cake was not perfect.  The buttercream icing was not white enough (you can see the different shades of yellow on the left v right of the cake as the icing got warmer) and the cake itself was a bit undercooked!  I felt very off my game!  But my sis was suitably impressed, and that was what I was going for.  So, do you think I got the likeness right?  

via

Here's a progress shot.  I made two muffins for his 'ears'.  Are you impressed?

And here are a bunch of other adventure time cakes courtesy of the internet!!

Row 1: 1, 2, 3
Row 2: 1, 2, 3

I'm linking up with Make Something Monday over at Sarahndipities because, why not!!

Ginger!

via

I personally like everything about ginger.  My dad is ginger.  Unfortunately, none of his children are :(  Boo!  I'm hoping that if I have children the ginger gene will somehow rear its bright orange head.   I love ginger tea, crystallized ginger and if course, gingerbread.

Christmas for me means gingerbread!  It's the only reason I will visit Starbucks, because during the Christmas period they have gingerbread latte!  

This is my favourite recipe for making gingerbread men, which I found ages ago on the back of some packet or other, so I'm going to share it.

Gingerbread Men Cookies

120g unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup golden syrup
1 egg
2 1/2 cups SR flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbs ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 drops vanilla essence
1 tsp bicarb soda

Cream the butter and sugar, add the egg, golden syrup and essence.  Add the sifted flour, spices and bicarb.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 mins.  Then roll out and cut away!  I also put the cut out men in the freezer for 10 min before they went into the oven, but these like to puff up a lot in any case!  Bake for 6 minutes or until golden at 180 C.

I do a pretty basic glace icing, and decorate them fairly simply.  They look very homemade :D

*NOM*

I really want to try a gingerbread house this year, but it look like a lot of effort.  If I make one I will definitely share!!

You *haven't* been to Sassafras?!?

... is what a colleague recently said to me, in a tone that suggested I had committed some kind of mortal sin.
The BF and I were due for a holiday anyway, and I had a little spare cash, so I booked a night in Sassafras.

It was lovely!  So green, so lush.  We got rained on all day the first day, but a bit of sun poked through the clouds on the second day.

A lovely view of farms and trees through the mist.

Lots of pretty flowers in bloom.

Not a flower, but  Chinese Cedars are so hot right now.

The BEST place was Tea Leaves, a store which sells about 300 varieties of tea and boasts of the most extensive range of teapots!

No bulls please :)

They had this one, which I thought was the coolest:

A nice surprise was finding a wool store!  I bought myself some goodies!

Yes, calm down, I am now the owner of a Zauberball!!!

But it was quite touristy.  Lots of gift shops full of rubbish.  Like this:

Giant cherries anyone?  (I apologise for offending you if you have one of these in your house)

I'm fairly certain Sassafras has the highest density of tea rooms per square kilometre in the world.  And we didn't have scones anywhere!  So I promptly made myself some when we got home, using my favourite easy recipe.

Mine looked just as tasty! (via)

A bit sad I didn't go to Miss Marples or the Tesselaar Tulip Festival, but my least favourite thing about holidays are tourists, even when I am one, so it was probably for the best!!

WIP - wowza!

WIP

Current bead count:  546

Woooowwwww..  I've only added 2 inches to the size of my dahlia, but have almost doubled the amount of beads I'd added since last time.  It's slow going, but I actually find it quite therapeutic.  It's also portable, so that means this project continues to be public transport friendly.  It still looks the same as last time, so I've gone for a more arty shot.

ooo la la

Reading

I'm technically listening to this... love audio books, I hate sacrificing my precious crochet time during my morning commute, so having some old guy read to me has been very useful.  It does get a bit, shall we say awkward when it gets a bit... sexy.  Listening to some elderly gentlemen describe these scenes... It's a bit creepy.  

Overshadowed by the awesomeness of audiobooks is the fact that these books... man, they are a marathon.  A good friend of mine aptly described the reading experience as needing to take a xanex every time you picked it up.  *Spoilers so look away if you don't want to know* Can any more bad shit happen?  Seriously, Rob and Catlyn?  *sob* Dany banishing Mormont?  booo!  Tyrion about to get his head chopped off?  Aye carumba!  And it just goes on and on and on and on... and it moves so slowly.  

However, once I start something I stick with it, so I'll keep going.  But after this installment I am going to treat myself with something much more fun!  Any suggestions?

Also, just because I wanted to show of, and it IS a book after all.... LOOK WHAT I MANAGED TO PICK UP!  Soo exciting!  Me and my sisters would just spend hours looking at this and trying to decide what cake to ask mum for on our birthday.   Between the three of us girls, my made us the bunny, minnie and mickey mouse, the pig... I'm sure there were others!  It would be lovely to hear about your memories relating to this book.

Women's weekly have omitted 4 of the cakes though, which include mickey and minnie, for copyright purposes... for the life of me I can't work out which were the other two.  I think my mum's original version of this has long since disintegrated!

Check out Tami's Amis for more WIPs and Small Things for this week's yarn along. 

Sunday night

What were you doing with your Sunday night?

Oh that sounds nice.

What was I doing?

Oh.. just making meringues...

...yeah, I'm bad ass.

Trying new things

By my grandmotherly standards, I had an insane weekend.  Well, there were lots of grandmotherly things included, but I still did A LOT!  I'm usually such a sloth.

I tried out some cool new recipes, made alterations to some old old ones, had some success and some total failure. You know what I hate? people who recommend recipes without trying them themselves first.  So, I will only show recipes which have worked for me :D

Found via Punchfork (which is pretty awesome btw) I used this recipe and made corn dogs!  Next time I'll add a bit more milk to the batter because I think it was a bit too gluggy, but they were scrumptious!  I might also try making these with mini hot dogs, because I could only make one at a time with my puny deep-fryer.

The only problem is, now I have a giant bag of corn meal left.  Who's coming over for corn dogs??

Also via punchfork, I made this recipe for roasted tomato soup.  Ok, so it's a bit of a no-brainer recipe... but LAY OFF!  I hadn't ever made tomato soup before, as I've never liked the canned stuff.  But this recipe is very tasty.  And once you've made it once, you really won't need to look at the recipe again.  This is the second time I'd made it, and this time I added a red capsicum.  It came out very capsicummy!  mmmm

I've made this recipe for chocolate cupcakes many times before, but this time I used some super cool coffee flavoured chocolate buttons I found at Haighs.  I also subbed extra flour for the almond meal, doubled the amount of instant coffee and didn't ice them.

Exclusively Food is my absolute favourite website for baking recipes.  I have so far had 100% success rate with all recipes, and there are lovely detailed instructions and pictures for each recipe.

And, in the interests of full disclosure, I tried this recipe for bread... the idea being I would have lovely soft warm bread for breakfast Saturday morning.  TOTAL DISASTER.  I'm sure the recipe is fine, it seems to be a fairly standard bread recipe.  But mine was flat, burnt on the outside and dough in the middle!  I wish I remembered to take a photo, it was hilarious!  Oh well.. better luck next time...

My last weekend activity was testing out my green thumb. I got my little potted herb garden re-started.  I'd attempted this before, but made the mistake of putting them outside for some "sun", only to have the whole lot totally infested by bugs.  I also sowed some sweet-peas, but I will spare you the photos of a pot full of dirt.

Also, I'm sure you can tell, I've discovered a super cool Mosiac generator, making me look very professional indeed!

Do you have any recipes to share?  Any secrets of herb growing success?

Stuff I like, and stuff I've seen

I like stuff.  I'm sorry but I do.

I live in a material world and I am a material girl. (Anyone else love that line in The Wedding Singer?)  I can't help it.

I saw this post by Lauren Carney and was beside myself with awe.  How gorgeous.  I made a total impulse buy and bought this sweet brooch:

Sold 19 July 2011.  Muahhahahah.

 Another impulse buy, I couldn't resist this cute bath mat.

The Kitten approves, and thank goodness! The bath mat is one of her favorite chill out places.

Other stuff I've spied lately...

DIY Dahlia Corsage Brooch, spotted by Lisa.

And Lisa found this cute Narwhal crochet pattern.  Might have to get my amigurumi back on! 

Narwhal ami pattern from Wunderkammer

  Knitrageous also did some etsy shopping and picked up this cute knitting eye chart.


Very cool, though I couldn't find who on etsy was selling it.  Little help?

 Speaking of etsy (again)... look at this!!

Muffin pan and measuring spoon necklace from CuteAbility

  And MiA spotted these gorgeous cookies!

Granny square cookies from sugar and meringue.

Finally, on a totally different note, I saw Capitain America: First Avenger over the weekend.  I was originally intending not to post such frivolous things such as my opinion of  movies on my little blog... but... I friggin loved this movie.  I generally quite like comic books movies, but the idea of Captain America didn't interest me very much.  I thought it would be all war and American patriotism. But it was awesome!  There was really very little of that stuff and it was more about skinny Steve Rodgers becoming the bad ass Captain America.  I can't pinpoint exactly why I liked it, I think it mostly had to do with Evans' performance.  So I am now a massive Chris Evans fan (I  already really liked him in The Losers, Scott Pilgrim and Fantastic 4 anyway).  And omg The Avengers trailer?  You have got to be kidding me.  I nearly peed my pants.  Make sure you stay til the end of the credits for this one. 

awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome

Seen something cool lately?  Please share below!

Around the internets

Some cool things from blogland and the internets...

If you've never thought about dying your own yarn, you will after checking this post out by pea soup of the day (I know I am!)





I just did this! Srsly.

 

I just discovered Fuck Yeah Crochet Goat. I love memes.  And I feel this one was created just for me.  Thank you internets <3

Recipe for fresh lemon loaf via Be by Belinda. This is on my baking agenda for this weekend!

I guess I have a bit of a thing for poufs.  The one pictured is particularly lovely, via Laurasners

I'm not one for useless items, like throw cushions, however Handmade Romance spotted these ones at Craft Hatch.  How did I only just find out about Craft Hatch?

I saw this a while ago but it's still awesome enough to share - baby Who via Mateo and Me.

Still on the Who theme, Forbidden Planet have just released a 10 shirt!  So nerdalicious!
I've recently been really frustrated with sewing lately, it takes so damn long and it's fiddly.  Though this blue cowl dress by Jorth is making me have second thoughts.

Crochet Stockinette via Sweet Little Stitches.  Must give it a try!

Crochet tartan by The Adventures of the Gingerbread Lady.

Lacy crochet bracelet spotted by tangled happy.