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

Breakfasting: Sally's Kitchen

My sincere apolgies to my sister Jacks, I just had to have eggs benny without you!  It just wasn't the same, I assure you!

Location:  Sally's Kitchen, 295 Exhibition Street Melbourne
Dining companion: Lermm
Dining date:  17 May 2013
Ordered:  Grilled asparagus with poached egg, hollandais & prociutto; skinny latte

A very cute and cozy location.  Lermm arrived first and I could literally not see her from the entrance way.  Service was pleasant, but frightfully slow.  The table we habitated was teeny tiny and the plates were huge.  Maybe that's supposed to be charming but somebody needs to do their math.

My eggs benny (for that is what they were, regardless of the fancified language) was ok.  Sauce was tasty but lacking that special something.  One of the eggs was slightly overcooked.  Ciabatta is not my favourite base for eggs benny, and I don't enjoy sharp edges on my toast in any case.  I have now decided that panchetta is not for me - it's all stringy, how is that enjoyable?  So overall an average dish. 

Sally's Kitchen's eggs benny gets a score of 5 out of 10 Benedicts!!

Don't get me wrong, the dining experience was very pleasant and I will definitely put Sally's Kitchen into my regular roster of breakfast locations!

~Tan

Breakfasting: Manchester Press

Breakfast is my fave.  It's about time I started documenting my food exploits beyond my search for the ultimate Melbourne CBD eggs benny.

Location:  Manchester Press, 8 Rankins Lane, Melbourne
Dining companion:  Lermm
Dining Date: 10 May 2013
Ordered:  2 x skinny lattes, fruit bagel with wildberry marscapone, strawberries and 'pistashio dust'

My bagel was super delicious, if a bit excessive.  Not sure if you can tell from the photo, but there really was copious amounts of marscapone.  Oh, don't get me wrong it was delectable - but I couldn't eat the whole thing, and that's saying something! 

The coffee was great and the service was friendly.  It has a great atmosphere, and I love how hidden away it feels. Will definitely go again!

Can't say much more than that - it's a bagel - deal with it.

~Tan

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!!

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. 

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!

My sunday

Obviously yesterday was mothers day.

I won't go into details, but I didn think this was a good opportunity to share a couple of my favorite recipes which I made for lunch yesterday.

A while back Meet me at Mikes blogged a few baked risotto recipes . I've made No 2 - the Tomato and Parmesan Risotto a couple of times now. I make a few variations to the recipe:

1. add a couple of rashers of bacon at the same time as the onion.
2. omit capers and lemon zest (only because I didn't have these ingredients handy - it still turns out scrumptious)
3. double the recipe - Still turns out fab and makes enough to serve 5 people!
4. I use that fresh chilli you get from the fridge section of the supermarket rather than flakes - and then only the mild version.

This all fits in my 20cm cast iron crock pot - right to the brim but it doesn't expand so don't worry!

Doesn't look attractive but one of my favorite recipies now! Very tasty and VERY simple.
I've made this recipe for doughnuts (specifically, beignets) countless times now, and they always go down well. They melt in your mouth. I halve the recipe and that easily makes enough for 6+ people (6 people who eat a bunch of doughnuts each too!!).

Yesterday I even cut out different shapes - hearts and little men, and all turned out delicious. They didn't last very long but well worth the effort.

Also spent some time yesterday teaching mum and sis to crochet granny squares. There is mum's first granny square - go mum!

My sis thoroughly enjoyed both the doughnuts and the granny squares - actually I lie about the granny squares, she found them far too frustrating to make :( - but she wore hers around her neck :).

My kitchen table yesterday, crochet, doughnuts, coffee, what more could you want!! That black/grey item there is my Monroe that I managed to finish off, now for blocking and then I'll be ready to show it off properly :)

Minestrone Soup

So first off, I have followers!! Hi!! I never expected anyone would actually follow my little blog, but welcome!!

And now, to business...

Thank goodness for colder weather! YAAAAYYY!  I love winter.  There are so many things I love about winter, and one of them is SOUP, and in particular the presence of bacon bones in the supermarket which facilitates my soup-making prowess.

On Sunday I made some minestrone soup.  It is a recipe from Better Homes and Gardens' Fast Ed.  It's SO tasty.  Like, ridiculously tasty.  And there is very little prep.  Cut up a few veggies and bung it in the pot, and forget about it! 

Here is the recipe, with my alterations.  The recipe calls for heaps of fresh herbs, which I find way too expensive as I never end up using all that I buy. I've instead opted for dry.  Also, dont worry too much about quantities. I find I need to add a fair splash of water at the end because the flavour can be quite overpowering.

Serves 4-5.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil

1 brown onion, sliced

2 carrots, diced

2 sticks of celery, sliced

2 bay leaves (I add 3-4)

4 sprigs thyme (I use a good couple of pinches of dry thyme)

6 cloves garlic (I was lazy and used minced garlic from a jar)

2 tbsp tomato paste

1kg bacon bones

1 L chicken stock

1 cup ml red wine

2 cans whole peeled tomatoes

2 tsp brown sugar

50g parmesan cheese

250 gr macaroni pasta

half a bunch of silverbeet

2 tbsp oregano

2 tbsp parsley

2 tbsp sage
2 tbsp garlic chives

Crusty bread stick to serve

Method:

Super easy.

1. Put the onion, carrots, celery, thyme and garlic in a pot, sautee until onion is soft.
2. Add tomato paste, cook off for 1 min.
3. Add stock, tomatoes, wine, cheese, sugar and bones.  Cover and simmer for 2 hours.
4. Add pasta, continue to cook until pasta is aldente.
5. Add herbs and silverbeet, cook until silverbeet softens.
6. Serve with bread!!