books, recipes, parenting & other things
When looking around the internet for some low-fat baking recipes, I was struck by this delicious sounding loaf from A Finger in Every Pie. Constructed almost entirely from fruit and nuts, this very healthy loaf is delicious warm from the oven, the sticky dates melting in your mouth.
I won’t repeat the recipe, as I followed A Finger in Every Pie’s exactly – go and check it out. Excellent for morning tea, afternoon tea, parties, and every other occasion you can think of. Delicious.
This very easy bread recipe is from Doris Brett’s fabulous Australian Bread Book. She describes it as a “no-frills bread… simple, but remarkably tasty, with a lot of body.” It’s a very fast and high riser, which is excellent if you’re in a bit of a hurry. It also makes lovely bread rolls as well as being an fantastic loaf bread.
2 teaspoons (one 7 gram sachet) dried yeast
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
2 teaspoons sugar
4 teaspoons salt
4 cups white flour
Dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup of the lukewarm water with 1/4 teaspoon of sugar. Allow it to stand for 5 minutes until frothy.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix three cups of flour, salt and the remaining sugar. Add the frothy yeast mixture, and the remaining water.
Slowly add the last cup of flour and any extra needed until the mixture is stiff enough to form a dough. Remove the dough from the bowl and knead for 15 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic. (Note – I never knead dough for 15 minutes – my limit is usually about 5 minutes. I’m not sure how much difference this makes to the finished loaf. My dough always feels smooth and elastic, and the bread is lovely. One day I’ll have to experiment with kneading for longer to see if it makes any difference.)
Brush or spray a large bowl lightly with oil, place the dough inside, and cover lightly with plastic or a tea-towell. Allow the dough to stand and double in volume.
When the dough has risen, punch it down and knead briefly. Either shape it into 12 rolls, and place them into greased muffins tins, or onto a tray, or place the dough inside a bread tin. (Niki at Esurientes has some great tips and thoughts on breadmaking here.) Cover the dough, and let it double in volume.
When the dough has risen, bake in a preheated oven at 190C. The rolls with need about 15 minutes, the bread tin about 30 minutes. To tell if bread is baked, roll it out of the tin, and tap the bottom of the loaf or roll – it should sound crisp and hollow.
I tend to be rather impressionistic when making soups, so this won’t be a very detailed recipe. It’s also a simpliflied, Sunday afternoon recipe, using canned lentils to reduce the cooking time. This is a very solid soup/stew, with a lovely flavour after being simmered for an hour or two, and absolutely filled with vegies. A small container full makes a very satisfying weekday lunch.
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, cubed
2 sticks of celery, sliced
pepper
dried thyme
1 medium sweet potato, diced
3 potatos, diced
1 tin crushed tomatoes
1 can brown lentils
roughly 6 cups vegetable stock
Saute the onion, carrots and celery for a few minutes, until the onion is translucent, then add pepper, thyme, and any other seasonings.
Add the potato and sweet potato, and stir. Add tomatoes, lentils, and enough stock to generously cover the vegies. Let the liquid come to the boil, then turn down to a low heat, cover, and let simmer for an hour.
After an hour, check on the consistency. If it’s getting a little thick for your liking, add more water, or stock, and let it simmer a bit longer. If it looks just right, take it off the heat. If eating straight away, serve with some parsley and light sprinkling of cheese. Otherwise, let it cool in the pot before packaging it to freeze, or for lunch packages the following day.
This simple scroll is a pleasant alternative to a traditional sandwich, made on flat bread. If I wasn’t having anything else with it, I would add more vegetables, but it’s much easier to roll and transport with minimal ingredients inside.
1 large circle of flatbread
2 big spoonfuls roasted pumpkin
pesto
feta cheese spread
avocado
In the morning, lie out the round of bread, and spread it lightly with the pesto, feta spread, and avocado. Sprinkle the roast pumpkin pieces generously over 2/3 of the bread.
Tightly roll up the bread, squashing down the pumpkin inside the scroll, and then wrap in sandwich paper. Before lunch, slice into small pieces, both for ease of consumption and pretty presentation.
These pleasantly light muffins were made for a brunch, and were an excellent morning muffin – not too sweet, not too rich. I used Manuka honey in these, which is very strong, but you need a nice strong tasting honey for the taste to come out in the finished product. An incredibly simple recipe, this is very easy to whip up the night before.
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup strong honey
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup yoghurt
2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup frozen raspberries
Preheat oven to 200C, and grease or otherwise prepare one muffin tray.
Beat the butter and honey together, then beat in the eggs, vanilla and yoghurt.
Gently fold in the flour, spices and raspberries. Spoon into the muffin tray, and bake for 20 minutes.
Prior to baking this, I had actually never made or even eaten a souffle before, but for some reason I had written it down as one of the 25 things I wanted to do before I turned 25. I bought the souffle dish some time ago, in preparation for fulfilling this goal, but then it drifted out of my mind. Finally, on the spur of the moment, I grabbed a recipe out of Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion and whipped up her Classic Cheese Souffle, which is a deliciously light eggy cheesy concoction. Stephanie writes, “Souffles are not nearly as fraught with danger as some cookery books would have you believe,” and she’s right. I was surprised at how easy this was. Mine rose, as you can see, and didn’t immediately sink down – it looked wonderfully appetising at the table, and when served was fluffy and airy. Perfect.
30 g butter
3 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons plain flour
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons freshly grated gruyere cheese (I just used an aged cheddar)
4 eggs yolks
salt
pepper
5 eggs whites
Preheat the oven to 200C. Butter a 1 litre souffle dish well, and sprinkle in 1 tablespoon of the parmesan cheese to coat the sides and the base.
Melt 30g of butter in small saucepan. Stir in flour and cook over a moderate heat, stirring, for 2 minutes. Gradually add the milk, while stirring. Bring to a boil (mine was rather thick already), then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in gruyere and remaining parmesan cheese, and then the egg yolks, one at a time. Transfer to a large mixing bowl (or mix it initially in a large saucepan.)
Whisk eggwhites until firm. Tip half on top of the cheese sauce, and using a metal spoon, lift and fold the whites through the mixture. Continue with the remaining egg whites. The mixture should look frothy and spongy.
Pour the mixture into the prepared dish, and gently run your thumb around the edge of the mixture – the souffle will rise within this flattened edge. Place souffle in oven and do not disturb for 25 minutes. The top should be well risen and browned. Touch gently – the souffle should yield, but not feel liquid.
Take the souffle to the table and serve immediately with a large serving spoon.
This is a recipe really only suited to the Southern Hemisphere Christmas, but how well suited to our weather it is. This is perfect to have after Christmas lunch – the familiar spices and fruits of a traditional Christmas pudding mixed up in a very easy creamy homemade icecream.
600 g cream
1 cup icing sugar
60 g chopped glace cherries
1/2 cup chopped raisins
1/2 cup sultanas
1 tablespoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3 tablespoons toasted slivered almonds
1/2 cup melted dark chocolate
4 egg whites
1/4 cup brandy, frangelico, or other spirit
Put the fruit in a large bowl, and add the spices and brandy. Stir well, and leave to soak overnight. (If you don’t have time, leave to soak as long as possible).
Whip egg whites, and add half the sugar to the egg whites.
Whip the cream, and add the remaining sugar to the cream.
Add the egg whites and cream to the fruit. Mix well. Stir in the melted chocolate.
Choose a reasonably sized bowl to freeze the icecream in. You will invert the icecream to serve it, so it doesn’t have to be a serving bowl. I used a metal mixing bowl, which worked well.
Sprinkle the toasted almonds over the bottom of the bowl, and then gently pour in the icecream mixture. Freeze overnight.
To serve, run a little hot water over the outside of the bowl, and invert onto a plate just before serving.
This recipe is from Lucullian Delights, and although I had a little trouble with the quantities of ingredients, it’s a lovely rich chocolate biscuit, with surprisingly little work involved. I thought pine nuts were an unusual nut to use in a sweet biscuit, but they work very well. I’d recommend doubling the recipe amount here, as it didn’t really make enough biscuits for my taste.
150 grams salted butter
1 cup brown sugar
4 tblsp cocoa powder
1 1/2 cup plain flour
3 tblsp pinenuts
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Beat together the butter and sugar until smooth, and then mix in the cocoa powder and pine nuts.
I found at this stage that the mixture was too stiff to add the flour, and so I added about 4 tablespoons of water, and then firmly beat the flour in.
Roll the dough into a ‘sausage’ and let it rest wrapped in plastic foil for an hour in the fridge, before slicing into 1/2cm thick circles. I didn’t bother to do this, and just squashed the dough into rough circles between my hands before putting them on a baking tray.
Bake for 10 minutes, and after a couple of minutes out of the oven, cool on a rack.
This lovely recipe is from SDD – The Food Blog, and a very lovely buttery limey concoction it is – a very summery cookie, and perfect for this time of year. My cookies were even more buttery than the recipe intends, as I accidently used 250 grams instead of 210. I used bottled lime juice, and I imagine these cookies would be even more delicious using fresh limes, and perhaps a bit of fresh lime zest sprinkled over the top.
1 cup butter
1 cup raw sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 cup lime juice
3 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped pecans
Preheat the oven to 180C, and line or grease a baking tray.
Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth. Beat in the eggs, vanilla and lime juice – the mixture will now look a little curdled, which is fine.
Add the flour, baking soda, salt and pecans, and beat well.
Flatten heaped teaspoonfuls of the mixture on the baking tray, and sprinkle with raw sugar. Bake for 15 minutes, or until slightly golden around the edges. Cool on a rack.
Part One of my great Christmas Baking Extravaganza – these gorgeous chewy little ginger cookies. This recipe is from Baking Sheet, and they turned out really well (I made a couple of small substitutions). They were gorgeous five minutes out of the oven – a crisp crunch of sugar on the outside, warm chewy ginger goodness on the inside, and the perfect size for popping straight into your mouth. They’re made with oil, not butter, which means it’s an extremely easy mixture to whip up. I’m packaging them up with a few other biscuits for a Christmas gift, so hopefully they’ll still be as nice a day or two after baking.
2 cups plain flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each ground cardamom (I used allspice) and black pepper
1 cup raw sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/4 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup chopped crystallised ginger
1/4 cup coarse sugar, for rolling
Preheat the oven to 180C, and line a tray with baking paper.
In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, spices, baking soda and salt.
In a large bowl, beat together sugar and vegetable oil. Beat in the egg and golden syrup until smooth. Stir in flour mixture until well combined, then add in crystallised ginger.
Shape dough into 3 centimetre balls, roll in coarse sugar and squash down onto the baking. Bake for 7-8 minutes until very lightly browned.
Let cookies cool for 3-5 minutes on cookie sheet, then remove to a wire rack until cool.
o frabjous day! 