o frabjous day!

Category: Recipes

  • Cauliflower Soup

    This is a lovely creamy soup with a beautifully smooth rich texture and sweet flavour, and very quick to make. It’s a recipe from the August 2007 issue of delicious magazine, which I altered slightly to make it a little lower in fat. It didn’t detract from the creaminess of the soup – in fact,…

  • Herb pilaf

    I wanted to do something a little different to accompany some chicken breasts, and settled on the idea of a herb pilaf from the ever useful Cook’s Companion by Stephanie Alexander. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly as, frustratingly, I didn’t have quite enough of all the herbs – I suspect the proper amounts of…

  • Banana bread with dates

    When I cut into this banana bread, still warm and steaming from the oven, and had my first exploratory taste, I decided that this could possibly be the best banana bread I’ve ever made. Some banana breads are too dry, some are too oily, but this banana bread was just, absolutely right. It’s essentially Nigella’s…

  • Pumpkin & Choc Chip Biscuits

    I found this recipe at the always inventive Baking Bites – I’ve never had a failure with her cookie and cupcake recipes, and as she described, these cookies were moist and slightly chewy without being cakey or overly dense. I’d never actually used pumpkin in a sweet baking recipe before – it’s more of an…

  • Roast Tomato Soup

    This soup is so gorgeous – tangy, chunky tomatoey goodness.  And it barely warrants being called a recipe. Take about 1.5 kilos of very ripe tomatoes.  Cut them in half or quarters, depending on the size, and spread out on a baking tray.  Drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle over salt.  Roughly chop two onions…

  • Smoked Salmon and Camembert Quiche

    This recipe from Taste fit the bill when I was looking for a quick quiche to make for lunch. “Oh wow,” said my guest, “you made your own pastry.” Actually, I didn’t, but apparently I’m skilled at manhandling frozen pastry until it looks homemade. Good to know. This was wonderful, but I think that’s easy…

  • Bean & Baby Spinach Salad

    I adapted this recipe from a Valli Little recipe in the September 2007 edition of delicious magazine. It’s a lovely tangy salad, with a gorgeous dressing. The original has lots of mint in it as the main leafy substance, while I used very little – I think it could have used a bit more, but…

  • Mini Raspberry Cheesecakes

    I left it way too late in the day to photograph these little cheesecakes (I was too busy eating them), and as a result neither of these photos are really in focus – hence the small size. I had my zoom lens on the camera, and took the cake out to the back steps so…

  • Lemon & Chocolate Loaf Cake

    Man, I love this cake. It’s so lovely and light and moist and generally the bomb – also I think you could substitute nuts or cranberries or… other things for the chocolate and you would get a completely different cake-vibe. Man. How articulate. Recipe is from an old Women’s Weekly cookbook. ingredients: 125g butter 1…

  • Chocolate Chip & Vanilla Buttercream Cupcakes

    I love cupcakes. The perfect serving size, the perfect amount of icing & the prospect of silly decorations. I restrained myself here with pink sprinkles. I sometimes find it a bit of a challenge to make nice moist cupcakes – this particular batch was a little dry but I’m fairly sure that’s because I mis-measured…