Looky looky what I’m up to. This is my first attempt at decorating cookies with fondant. I’ve only just managed to get my head around piping outlines and flooding cookies with royal icing, but the decorating process boggles my mind. I really found the fondant much easier.
These are for my friend’s baby shower this weekend. She doesn’t know what she’s having (the patience I just don’t possess) so the theme is bright colours. Loving these. Going to do them with pink and yellow bodies too.
Woohoo! My first review. I’m very excited about this.
Flora Cuisine, a liquid butter substitute. Initially I was a bit weary of this product, I bought some when it launched and never used it. I like to use real butter for my baking and cooking and not just any butter, I like to use the best.
The formal blurb:
This is a totally non-biased review, Flora has not influenced my opinion and I have not received payment or product sponsorship to sway my opinion of this product.
What Flora says about their product:
From their website ‘Flora Cuisine is especially made for cooking. It’s a healthy blend of sunflower, linseed and rapeseed oils with a deliciously mild taste – great for bringing out the natural flavours in your cooking my love! Plus it cooks brilliantly, none of that spitting or burning. What a pleasure. And as you may know by now, it’s got 45% less saturated fat than olive oil, so it’s a healthier choice.’
The bottle says its good for frying, roasting and baking.
The experiment:
Experiment 1: The cupcake
I thought it would be a great experiment to test this stuff out on my usual recipes using my usual baking methods. Normally, if a cupcake recipe calls for butter (which they usually do), I’ll melt the butter as this gives an awesome dome to the end product. So my first experiment would be to test my usual vanilla cupcake recipe replacing the 113g melted butter with 120ml of Flora Cuisine and comparing the texture, taste and appearance of the final cupcake.
The Results
I was really happy with the cupcake the Flora mixture produced. The cupcakes had perfect domes as you can see above and the taste was not too different from my usual cupcakes. The texture was moist and fluffy, although they were a little bit more dense than usual, but that isn’t necessarily a negative.
Experiment 2: The cookie
Now, this was a total fail. I used the Flora on a batch of cookies I was making for Easter. I ended up having to make a completely new batch. The dough was more like that of the cupcakes; runny and completely unworkable for a cookie. I won’t be doing that again.
The verdict:
Would I use this product again? Most definitely for baking cakes and cupcakes. My usual 250g stick of butter normally costs me around the £2 mark and is sufficient for 24 cupcakes (not including frosting). A bottle of Flora Cuisine sells for £1.99 and I get 48 cupcakes from that. I wouldn’t use it for frosting or making cookies as it doesn’t give the hold normal butter or margarine does. However, overall I think this is a very good product. 3/5 stars.
I saw this online today. I don’t know who came up with this, or who designed it, but I think it should be shared. I love a little eye-opener to put my life into perspective.
I’m ashamed to say that up until now I’ve never made my own pizza dough before. Oh my word! I pledge never to buy pre-made pizza bases ever again! I made these for the family last Friday (and Saturday) and they were incredible. The pizza dough was so simple to make, and most importantly, making the dough was super fun. I loved getting my hands all mucky and acting all italian-chef-like in the kitchen yo!
Try this pizza dough recipe I found on http://www.annamariavolpi.com. She’s got stage-by-stage pictures if you find it hard to follow the recipe without them. I used bread flour instead of normal flour as I had been told that was the way to go. I also tried it with brown bread flour because I’m a health nut and it was really good albeit a bit heavy.
Once you’ve got the dough rolled out (I didn’t worry about perfect circles, I like the rustic look), fold the sides and cover the dough in tomato passata or paste then start adding your ingredients of choice.
I baked mine in the oven at 200 degrees for around 12 minutes. We also tried them with cheese-stuffed crusts which the kids loved.: cut small rectangles of cheese and fold the sides of the dough over with the cheese in the middle.
1 tablespoon active dry yeast, or 1 oz (25 g) brewer’s yeast
1 1/2 cups (350 cc) warm water
3 1/2 cups (500 g) flour
1 tablespoon extra-
pinch of salt
This is the ultimate chocolate shortbread cookie. After trying her sister cookie: the Peanut Butter Shortbread Cookie last month (which I have made every other day since), I just couldn’t resist making these. I couldn’t get my hands on any luxury cocoa before I got baking, but they tasted almighty just the same.
Double Dark Chocolate Shortbread
makes about 12-14 cookies, double the recipe if you want to
preheat oven to 160 (325F)
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup dark cocoa powder
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
This recipe is taken from The View From Great Island Blog. Visit the site for more amazing recipes.
This is the kind of recipe I come up with when I haven’t had a chance to eat anything substantial during the day and the fatty in me is begging to be fed something heavy. That’s not to say that this lasagna isn’t packed full of goodness because it is! It’s high in protein (which us vegetarians need) and fibre and if you use brown lasagna sheets it’s low GI too, keeping you fuller for longer. The reason I say my fatty side created this recipe is because it’s definitely got more to it than it really needs and if I’m being good (and ignoring the fatty) I omit the white sauce.
Serves 4:
2 large aubergines, sliced into thin circles
salt
pepper
olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
30g sun dried tomatoes, sliced
1 can lentils
50ml tomato paste
2 tins chopped tomatoes
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
handful fresh basil, chopped (and full leaves to serve)
fresh lasagna sheets
For white sauce:
25g/1oz butter
25g/1oz plain flour
600ml/1 pint milk
salt and white pepper
Heat grill to a medium, high heat while you prepare the aubergine. Cut aubergine into thin circles and lay-out on a baking sheet. Cover with olive oil and season. Grill for 20 minutes or until, moist, soft and delicate, turning half way.
While aubergine grills: Put onions into a large, heavy based pan and douse in a generous helping of olive oil. Turn the heat to medium and saute the onions until they are soft and of a translucent yellow colouring. Add sun-dried tomatoes and cook for a further minute. Add lentils, tomato paste, garlic and Italian seasoning. Cook for a further two minutes allowing the flavours to fuse with the lentils. Add tinned tomatoes, garlic, fresh basil, salt and pepper. Cook on low heat for 5 minutes and set aside while you make the white sauce.
Prepare white sauce: Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes.Take the pan off the heat and gradually stir in the milk to get a smooth sauce. Return to the heat and, stirring all the time, bring to the boil.Simmer gently for 8-10 minutes and season with salt and white pepper.
Preheat the oven to 190°C, gas mark 5. Cover the bottom of a medium-sized ovenproof serving dish with olive oil. Begin layering the lasagna with a single layer of lasagna sheets. Spread 1/3 lentil mix onto the lasagna sheets, top with 1/2 of the aubergine circles, cover with 1/3 white sauce and finally 1/3 of the sliced mozzarella. Repeat layering, finishing with final layer of lasagna, covered with lentils, white sauce and mozzarella. Bake in the oven, uncovered, for 20-25 minutes until bubbling and brown.
Holidays + rainy weather + bored children = psycho mom. I don’t possess the patience or the interest to do crafty type things with my children (terrible mom I know!). I leave that kind of stuff for school. However, the weather took a turn for the worse as soon as the holidays began and there was only so much hanging around all day in parks with a six month old while her brothers run riot that I could take. I had to come up with a plan to keep my monsters busy. Playing tv games all day turns my already hyper children into major nightmares so I had to put on my crafty gloves and muster up something ‘eastery’ for us to do. I found this idea on Pinterest (yes again) and decided to take it to the next level by creating ‘eco friendly’ confetti that would be ok to leave outside when we smashed these in the garden or park.
I’ve never blown eggs before and although these were such a success and I’d like to do them every year as a family tradition, I think I’ll use an egg blower next time. Blowing the eggs consists of making a tiny hole at the tip of the egg using a pin, you then turn the egg over and make a larger hole at the base of the egg. To blow the egg out of the large hole you place your mouth over the small hole at the top and, well, blow. The egg should pour out pretty easily, if you have trouble getting the yolk out, just poke it a little with the pin to break it.
I then boiled the egg shells to sterilise them and then left them, with the big hole facing down, on a kitchen towel to dry.
While those were drying I put the oven on a very low heat and proceeded to colour rice for the confetti. I used about a cup full of rice (white or brown) to a few drops of gel food colouring diluted into a tablespoon or so of vinegar. I add the colouring mixture to the rice and mix it until the colour is evenly distributed amongst the grains. I then spread the coloured rice out on a baking tray and left it in the warm oven to dry for 5-10 minutes while I made another colour.
Once the rice was dried, I added some food glitter to add sparkle. I also bought some edible stars and added this to the confetti.
Once your eggs have dried you can start the decorating process. Up until this point I had done the prep myself, with my eldest assisting me with the coloured rice. Now is when the kids get involved. If you want to cover your eggs in glitter you’ll need to fill them with the confetti and seal the base before decorating. To seal the confetti in we used a small square/circle of tissue paper which we glued over the large hole. This worked perfectly. You then need to paint a thin layer of craft glue on the shell and roll the egg around in your glitter of choice. We repeated this process again after the first coat had dried, leaving a perfect glitter covering.
For the coloured shells: I diluted a few drops of food colouring in a tablespoon of vinegar in a 250ml glass, then filled the glass 3/4 of the way with water and stirred to combine. We then soaked the boiled egg shells (no need for drying them first) for a minimum of 15 minutes in the colouring mixture until they were bright with colour. Then left to dry, big hole down, on a tea towel. Drying takes at least an hour. Once dried we filled them with the confetti of coloured rice and stars.
We also added little chicks for extra fun! Obviously the chicks were taken home with us after our egg fight in the park.
I think the coloured rice was so vibrant and fun and the eggs made an amazing rattling sound when shaken. Super fab idea if I say so myself (giving myself a little back pat!).
Want to make some Easter egg cookies,but don’t have the hardware?Fashion an easter egg cookie cutter from a £1 metal circular cookie cutter.
Spring has sprung,but only until tomorrow.So I’m staying out of the kitchen while the sun is out.Sign on the door says ‘Cook on Vacation’.
