Baking | mutteringhousewife

October 31, 2012

Cornbread

Sometimes the day just gets away from you and you find yourself in the car with a couple of starving boys demanding to know what delectable treat you’ve whipped up for afternoon tea. What you do is hold them off for twenty minutes with yesterday’s strawberry sorbet while you mix up some cornbread.

I was given this recipe by a Korean colleague of my husband’s, but really only started making it after we got back from the US last year. Over there it’s a thing you serve as a meal’s carbohydrate, like mashed potatoes, which I still can’t bring myself to do. I do like to make this recipe and put it into mini muffin cups, that way it will get taken in lunch boxes by my crumb averse children. Makes about sixteen mini muffins.

What you’re supposed to do is mix together one cup of flour, one cup of yellow cornmeal or polenta, four teaspoons of baking powder, a third of a cup of sugar and a pinch of salt. Then you’re supposed to beat in an egg and add up to a half a cup of milk, enough to make a stiff batter. Then you stir in a quarter of a cup of oil. But because I was being nagged fairly thoroughly I just dumped everything in the bowl and mixed it up and scooped it into mini muffin cups. Done after about fifteen minutes at 180 degrees.

You can also scrape it into a baking paper lined lamington tin and bake it for a bit longer for your more traditional shape. I’m sorely tempted to skip the sugar next time and substitute grated Parmesan cheese. Let me know if you try it before I do. It may interest you to know that while Parmesan cheese can be grated effortlessly in a Thermomix, it just makes a stick mixer make whiny noises. I can’t be bothered trying it in a blender. In case you were wondering.

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October 26, 2012

Gingernuts

My parents-in-law are taking the Horror from Outer Space for the weekend, and to express my extreme gratitude I’m making them gingernuts. Old fashioned ones that’ll crack your dentures unless you dip them in tea. Not that they wear dentures. Poppa loves gingernuts, Nanna still suffers from vestiges of a harsh Protestant upbringing that causes her to regard food as fuel and not something to be enjoyed, but she does like the idea of home cooking and for everyone to be happy, so that’s good enough for me.

My recipe is based on the one in 1970 edition of the Women’s Weekly cookbook that I’m sure every Australian household still has.

In a saucepan melt 100 grams of butter with a tablespoon of golden syrup. I sometimes wonder if I should look for a fancy pants alternative to the CSR version I use, since that’s the direction I seem to be heading in, but it has a distinctive taste. Lyle’s golden syrup is completely different. I’m sure you could use it, but it’s a lot more effeminate tasting.

In a bowl mix together one cup of caster sugar (don’t go messing with brown sugar in this recipe, they won’t be as crunchy), three teaspoons of ground ginger, one teaspoon of mixed spice and an egg. By this time the butter should have melted, so toss into it a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and stir it up to make it fizz. I don’t think this is an essential instruction, but I like it. Tip the butter mixture into the sugar mixture and mix it all up. Add two cups of flour and work it in. It’s a pretty stiff dough.

Pinch walnut sized bits (in their shell, not out) of dough and press them round in the palm of your hand. You can put them fairly close together on your lined biscuit tray, they don’t spread a lot. Bake at a hundred and eighty degrees until they’re really quite brown. I was going to time them today, I can tell you that I put them in the oven at exactly 11.56am, but then I started looking at Facebook, and there was a Melbourne Cup lunch going, and you know, some time later my nose said to me I think they’re done now. It may have been twenty five minutes. Anyway, you don’t want to burn them, but for that brick like consistency you need them pretty brown.

So I think these should go some way to expressing my thanks, and take their mind off the fact that the Horror is going through their house like a swarm of ants eating everything he can find with sugar in it.

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October 25, 2012

Two types of Chocolate Muffins

I value audience participation, so I asked the Horror from Outer Space if he were given the choice between chocolate peppermint muffins and chocolate coconut muffins, what would it be? “Bacon muffins” he said.

I think if you’re going to make chocolate muffins, you may as well go all out and make chocolate with chocolate chips. I went looking for recipes, and loosely based my first version on that of an American woman who was making these as a healthy treat for her son who was going off to college. Should I even comment on that? Perhaps not. They were OK, and have been eaten, but required work. The recipe I provide here is more satisfying.

Take a metal bowl and melt about sixty grams of butter in it by sticking it in the oven which you’ve turned on to preheat. I do like avoiding washing up. Once it has melted, you’ll want to leave it to cool for a bit so you don’t cook the egg too early. My original version used oil at this step, but the butter makes it richer. Add a half a cup of milk and an egg and beat it all together. If you’re going down the chocolate peppermint route, add half a teaspoon of peppermint essence to the mixture now, no more, that stuff is strong. Now the dry ingredients. Add a cup of flour, one quarter of a cup of cocoa, one third of a cup of sugar, one quarter of a cup of chocolate chips, two teaspoons of baking powder, one teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. If you’re going down the coconut route, add a quarter of a cup of desiccated coconut here. You don’t have to do coconut or peppermint, but I wouldn’t advise doing both. Mix thoroughly, and spoon into those little pattycake cases, I don’t want my kids eating large sized ones of these. It makes twelve if you fill the cases up, then you’ll get those nice muffin tops, rather than the ones resulting from eating too many muffins. I would normally then top with about three chocolate chips per muffin for an even more exciting top, but I got to the bottom of the packet and am resisting opening the big packet I got from Chef’s Warehouse. Bake at 180 degrees for about twenty minutes. When you’re testing for doneness with a skewer, make sure you haven’t stabbed one of the chocolate chips, because that will give you the wrong idea.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must return to basting my batting.

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October 15, 2012

Fruitcake

You know that bit in KungFu Panda where Po’s dad is waiting for Po to have the noodle dream so he can become a real noodle chef? Well I had the fruitcake dream. It was a sign. It was time to go forth and buy glacé cherries.

This isn’t one of this cakes you accept graciously from your auntie, wait six months, then throw it in the compost. Actually, I don’t get that whole giving people fruitcake. Despite the fact that this one is delicious, I do understand that it isn’t for everyone. I do give out fruitcakes, but only to people who ask. Not only ask, because I’ll just assume they’re being polite and really don’t want to hurt my feelings, but actually beg. I was going to send half of this one to my grandma, as she’s a big fan of it, but there isn’t enough left after yesterday’s barbeque. She’ll have to wait for the next one to come along.

I know I go on about the best ingredients a bit, but that’s because it is important and I really want you to understand it and go to your own local markets and buy the best you can find. I also want the major supermarkets to go broke, so I only buy cat food, toilet paper and jumbo boxes of breakfast cereal from them, but that’s a rant for another day. This recipe is just fruit, and cake, so you want terrific fruit.

Place in your largest mixing bowl 250 grams of butter (or two sticks if you’re a non SI American, see Donna Hay, two can play at that game), and cream it with the zest of a lemon and a cup of sugar. If you want a golden crumb, use caster sugar. If you like it a bit darker and richer, go half caster and half brown. I might try using dark brown next time, if I’m feeling crazy. Beat in four eggs, one at a time.

Now for the fruit. Tip in 250 grams sultanas, 125 grams currants, 125 grams of mixed peel (have a hunt through the archives for a method to make your own) and 125 grams glacé cherries. I have used very fancy semi dried cherries for this in the past, but I do have a soft spot for green Big Sister cherries like Nanna used to use. The next 250 grams of dried fruit are at your discretion, but my favourite mix is 125 grams chopped crystallized ginger and 125 grams of the very zingy dried cranberries that are purveyed by Honest to Goodness. If you don’t use ginger, add a tablespoon of ground ginger when adding the flour. I’ve also used dried apricots, crystallized pineapple (who just thought of Professor Slughorn?), glazed figs and dates (I find the last two not acidic enough, but each to their own). Mix the fruit in with the butter and egg, this will take some elbow work. Then add a cup and a half of flour and a tablespoon of baking powder and mix that in. Scrape this lot into a cake tin lined with baking paper, mine is 20 by 20 cm. It doesn’t rise very much, so don’t worry that it almost fills the tin. Bake at 150 degrees Celsius for really quite some time. The original Woman’s Weekly recipe that I based this on says three hours, but mine usually take a bit less than that. Keep an eye on it, it will be a rich gold on top and a bit crunchy looking. Stick a skewer in it, if it comes out clean then take it out. I like it to cool out of the tin because the outsides get nice and firm.

I will not have fruitcake for lunch, I will not have fruitcake for lunch, I will not have fruitcake for lunch…

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October 12, 2012

Maple Syrup Cakes

If you live in Sydney, you’ll know it as the day you cursed the fact that you’d washed and put away your winter jumpers. Shortly I’m going to have three wet, cold and hungry kids here for whom a plate of crudites is just not going to cut it. The Horror will be coming home from camp, so will in addition be hysterically tired. What these kids need is Maple Syrup Cakes.

This is another Donna Hay recipe, and at the risk of this becoming a baking and pet peeves blog, her cookbooks really annoy me. The recipes are terrific, don’t get me wrong. I just can’t stand the whole matchy matchy blue thing, or the random words drifting across pages. She seems like the kind of person who’d have those cursive wooden block letters spelling out delicious in her kitchen. I have been tempted to buy a set of these blocks so I can spell out testicles across my kitchen windowsill, but it seems like too much effort.

I get the feeling this recipe has been translated from another set of measurements, as there are a few fractions involved. I have discovered that rounding makes little difference, so here you go.

Cream together 90 grams of butter with two thirds of a cup of brown sugar and two tablespoons of caster sugar. I’ll have to try without the caster sugar, I can’t believe it would make too much difference. Also, butter at the temperature my kitchen is at isn’t going to cream, so put it in a metal bowl and sit it in the oven at 50 degrees for a bit. Add 2 eggs, one at a time. Add 2 tablespoons of milk, half a cup of maple syrup, one and two thirds of a cup of plain flour and two teaspoons of baking powder and mix until blended. If, like me, you can’t be bothered washing up a muffin tin, put cupcake papers in the twelve holes and divide the mixture between them. Bake at 180 degrees for about twenty minutes.

These cakes keep fairly well, as if they’re going to last more than the afternoon. Time to find my woolly hat.

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October 11, 2012

Dark Victory Chocolate Brownies

Yes, I do need an excuse to bake brownies, and now I have two. We’re hosting an end of season bbq for the Muffet’s team, and as we’re providing the meat I am naturally compelled to make something to have with coffee. I’m not that fond of meat. I’m also being nagged to make brownies by the Muffet’s schoolfriend, Lindy Lu. Lindy loves my baking and often sends requests home with the Muffet, because her mum never bakes anything. It makes a nice counterpoint to the Muffet, who complains that she never gets normal food in her lunchbox, like everyone else.

Even before the web it was easy to find multiple brownie recipes, everyone has a favourite. The one I’ve been making for a while comes from The Good Cookie by Tish Boyle, and I haven’t even altered it. Except to convert those absurd American measurements. A stick of butter, forsooth! How far can you get from SI??

I don’t use a double boiler, because guess who washes up? I use a metal bowl balanced over a saucepan of boiling water and it seems to do the trick. Place in the metal saucepan 200grams of very nice butter and 100g of dark chocolate. These, along with the cocoa, are the ingredients that will make people beg you for the recipe, their quality makes a big difference. I use Harmonie Organic Butter. I was using Belcolade chocolate drops and they were quite good, but then I bought one of those chunks of Callebaut chocolate you see at Harris Farms. Why do they sell them like that? How on earth are you supposed to break them down? The first one I got I just surreptitiously nibbled at until it was all gone. The second one was fortunately exactly the right size for these brownies, which was when I realised I couldn’t go back. Now I get Callebaut in chip form either at the IGA, or from the nice man at my local chocolate shop.

Place your bowl over the saucepan of boiling water and wait for the contents to melt. This took about as long as making a coffee, taking a phone call from my husband to ask why his Blackberry wasn’t syncing properly (I blame Google) and reheating the coffee in the microwave. Probably time he moved to an iPhone. Stir it with a wooden spoon then take it off the heat. Stir in half a cup of Dutch cocoa (mine comes in a dark brown container from Norton St Grocers and I can’t be bothered digging it out of the cupboard to get the brand), one and a quarter cups of caster sugar, and three eggs – one at a time. I also try to get nice eggs, but I can’t say that I can taste a difference. Then stir in one third of a cup of sour cream, once again, can’t taste the difference between Barambah Organic and Dairy Farmers, and two teaspoons of vanilla essence. Vanilla is the salt of the sweets world, you won’t necessarily pick it as a flavour but it makes everything taste nicer. Speaking of salt, I’ve recently started grinding a turn or two of sea salt into my brownie, but you really don’t want to overdo it. Last, stir in half a cup of plain flour. The recipe also suggests stirring in a cup of pecans, which sounds like a wonderful idea except, as you would have gathered by now, my family Don’t Like Bits In It.

Scrape mixture into a baking paper lined square or rectangular cake tin. Mine is square and 20cm a side. Bake at 160C for about 45 minutes. It will be all cracked on the top. I don’t bother dusting it with icing sugar, but you can if you’re a presentation kind of person.

I might have to take some to my choir committee meeting tonight, seeing as how making it delayed me sending out my treasurer’s report by at least an hour.

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October 9, 2012

Bread Sticks

I think I just wanted an excuse to turn on the oven today. I am having a hard time reacclimatizing. Maybe in twenty years time I’ll be one of those bleached blonde leather bags sitting on the Esplanade in Cairns sipping shandies. That conflicts a little with my plan to be a velvet clad cat lady, but I’m sure I can work something out.

I’m having a hard time getting something filling in my kids’ lunch boxes. They’ve all gone off sandwiches recently, the Horror was never into them at all. The Moose has access to a microwave at school, so he sometimes takes pasta. I’m sure they’d all like to eat just cakes and biscuits, but we’re not having that. Moderation in all things. I thought I’d give breadsticks a go.

The recipe is taken from a very learned tome called the Cook’s Book, and has detailed instructions on many complicated recipes you wouldn’t make in a pink fit. It has an excellent bread chapter, so I went from there. This is half the recipe they give, I wanted to make sure they’d get eaten before I went overboard.

Dissolve 5 grams of fresh yeast in 180 grams of water. I have one of those scales that you sit your bowl on and zero after putting in each ingredient, it’s revolutionized my cooking. My hairdresser made me buy it, that man has far to much influence on my behaviour. I get fresh yeast from my local IGA in little cubes, you might have to ask around at the deli’s in your area. Or you could use dried yeast, I’m pretty sure it converts to half a teaspoon.

Add 250 grams of flour. Mix it into a fairly wet dough with your hands, then leave it for about ten minutes. When you come back, sprinkle some salt over it, add a glug of olive oil and knead it a bit. Because I’m not making a soft, fluffy loaf of bread, I added another handful of flour to make a stiffer dough. Knead it until it’s smooth. The instructions then said to roll it out to one cm thickness, but I found it soft enough to spread it out with my hands onto a floured bread board. They also add that this is where you get finicky with a ruler and a sharp knife to get nice even sticks.

I’m actually going for lunchbox size and I favour the rustica look, which translates as frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn how they look, so that’s what my cutouts looked like. You can now roll each stick to get the traditional shape, or just lift each rectangle onto a biscuit tray that has been lined with baking paper and sprinkled with cornmeal. You then leave them to rise for the time it takes to rescue the washing from a sudden rain shower and pay a conductor and a rehearsal pianist for a month of work. Bear in mind that I also had to calculate superannuation. Spray them with more olive oil and sprinkle with salt. If you do it the other way around you just blow the salt onto the splashback. Put them in a 180 degree oven for about thirty minutes, but keep an eye on them. I like them fairly brown for extra crunch, you may like to leave them in for less time for a more bready result.

I do like the result, they’re like very miniature loaves of bread. I think if I’d made them a bit thinner they’d be crunchy all the way through, but this lot has a chewy centre. They’d be really good for dips, they don’t shatter.

I put the apple in there so you could see the size, not to be artsy fartsy. But will they pass the ultimate kid test? And can I be bothered making them regularly if they do? It’s unlikely, I have a very short attention span.

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September 21, 2012

Mixed Peel

When the weather gets warmer I start thinking about making fruitcake. Cut that out, mine’s really nice, not sticky or cloyingly sweet, and it doesn’t have nuts or brandy in it. I’ve made converts out of non fruitcake eaters. Alas, not my children, when they see me making a fruitcake they say “great, why can’t you make a cake that we actually like?”. I’ll keep making them eat it and in five or six years they’ll start to see it my way. Parenting is about patience.

I was going to wait until after the school holidays for the first step in my fruitcake, but serendipity stepped in. The first step is to make your own mixed peel, because the stuff you buy is dull dull dull. I make mine with grapefruit and orange peel, although today there’s a lemon in there too because I’m running the pantry down before we go away. My daughter and her friend walked the dogs around the block (a fairly rare occurrence, and the dogs are still lying on the floor recovering) and found bags of grapefruit on a front fence around the corner with a sign on them saying “free to a good home”, or something of that nature. Clearly a sign for me to make mixed peel. It’s really easy.

Peel one grapefruit and two oranges (or one orange and a lemon, if that’s what you happen to have) with a sharp knife, you should include the pith in this exercise, unlike when zesting citrus. Chop the peel up until it looks like this:

Bung it in a saucepan and cover it with water. Bring the lot to the boil and boil for about five minutes, or for about the time it takes to check Facebook and empty the dishwasher. Strain, discarding the water, and do it again. Strain again, and return just the peel to the saucepan with two cups of water and one cup of caster sugar. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the peel is translucent. I can’t remember how long this is, because I haven’t done it since last year, but a good twenty minutes or so. I then drain it and put the sticky mess of peel in Tupperware and into the fridge. It makes enough for about two fruitcakes. I reserve the syrup in a separate container, intending to use it something else, but I generally end up throwing it out after a couple of months. I clearly need to make more cocktails.

You’ll get the actual fruitcake recipe some other time, but I’m off on holidays. It may be that I find our travels to be sufficiently amusing to document, it may not. I may not be able to wrestle the iPad from my husband during our moments of leisure. So don’t hold your breath, and I’ll be back muttering again in a couple of weeks.

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September 11, 2012

Choc Chip Banana Cake

I don’t think two posts counts as a recurring theme, but I need to use up some bananas. My husband alleges that he eats bananas all the time, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it. I sometimes give one to the Muffet on her way to school when she’s been too busy in the hour since she woke up to eat breakfast. Lying on the floor singing, losing your shoes and bothering your brothers takes up a lot of time.

As it turns out, it appears that you can slap together any old combination of bananas, sugar, butter, eggs and flour and you’ll end up with some kind of cake. I pick a recipe from a school fundraiser cookbook that I have and give it a whirl. Remind me to take you on a tour of my cookbooks some time, sublime to the ridiculous just about covers it.

I never have butter at room temperature, although not for any good reason – my Nanna used to keep butter in a covered ceramic butter dish on the kitchen bench and it was always fine. Especially if you go through scads of it, like I do. However.

What you do is put your 125 grams of butter in a metal mixing dish and put it in the oven at 50 degrees while you go and hang out the washing. When you come back, add to it half a cup of caster sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla and beat with a fork until creamy. Or stick it in your Kitchen Aid if you’re a fancy pants with a giant marble clad kitchen. Beat in two eggs, one at a time. Squash in two overripe bananas and mash them in until there aren’t any bits for your fussy nine year old to complain about. Gently fold in 2 cups of plain flour and 4 teaspoons of baking powder. Or 2 cups of self raising flour if you haven’t been listening. Stir in half a cup of milk. Actually, I stirred in a quarter of a cup of sour cream and quarter of a cup of milk, and I’ll bet a half a cup of buttermilk would be pretty good too. Stir in 125 chocolate chips – nice ones, don’t even think of using supermarket ones you cheapskate.

Scrape mixture into a loaf tin lined with baking paper. Baking paper revolutionized my life, I go through metres of it. Bake for about thirty five minutes at 160 degrees, and make sure you test it with a skewer, because banana fudge is not a thing.

I’m definitely adding this one to the repertoire. It wouldn’t quite be sweet enough without the chocolate chips, it’s light and moist with a crunchy crust and I’d seriously consider adding about a third of a cup of coconut flakes next time if it wasn’t for fear of audience backlash. You may not have such an exacting customer base.

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September 10, 2012

There must be the perfect strawberry muffin recipe somewhere

Strawberries are sucking me in. They’re red and shiny and cheap. I keep buying them. Yet they’re often a little disappointing, and the kids are over them anyway like the fickle butterflies that they are. It’s very sad watching a punned of strawberries grow little beards and gently disintegrate on the kitchen bench top. One solution would be to stop buying the wretched things, but my peasant genes keep shouting Fruit! Cheap! Buy it!.

There’s a plethora of lemon recipes out there, but very few for strawberries that aren’t just chop them up and place them decoratively on top of something that doesn’t actually contain strawberries. I have made a strawberry lemonade, which I may share with you one day when I’ve run out of other housewifery things to blog about. I really want to make them into muffins, and as you’ve been following me like a bloodhound, you’ll know I’ve had a stab at a recipe that was fairly unsuccessful. They were quite nice, light and tangy, but the kids object to bits in their baked goods.

This means cooking the strawberries first. Take a punnet of strawberries, chop them up, bung them in a saucepan over low heat, put the lid on and leave them. My pots are fancy non stick ones, so if you’re worried about sticking, you could whack a small amount of butter in there too. After about half an hour you should be able to mash them up with a wooden spoon. I got about a cup of cooked strawberry mush.

Next I need a muffin recipe that has a wet component in it. For their own inexplicable reasons, Americans regard the pumpkin as a fruit you should shove into all kinds of baked goods. Sounds gross to me, but it does mean there are a few pumpkin muffin recipes out there. I found a likely one, and changed it completely. Here’s what I did.

Beat together 2 eggs, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1/2 cup of brown sugar because I think it tastes more interesting than white, and 1/3 cup of wheat germ because I’d like to pretend this is a healthy recipe. Also, I like wheat germ. Add the strawberry mush. If you can’t be bothered waiting for it to cool down, the stuff will start cooking, so work fast with the rest of it. Stir in 1 1/2 cups of plain flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Mix until smooth, but don’t beat it because you just don’t do that with muffins, they don’t like it.

Spoon the mixture into a greased twelve unit muffin tray. Actually, I put them in paper muffin cups, because I hate washing up muffin trays. Bake at 180 degrees for about fifteen minutes. They came out pretty well, kids were initially concerned about the brown colour, but that was from the brown sugar. They haven’t all been eaten yet, and are still pretty good after three days. I think next time I’ll put in a teaspoon of vanilla, and possibly a touch more sugar.

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Category: Baking