Merry Christmas!

Another year has flown past and I have not done as much of anything as I had planned. I am just finalising the menu for Christmas day and thought I would share it here: Breakfast - french toast made using brioche with fresh berries Lunch - lobster with lemon butter, prawns with dipping sauce, charcoal chicken (i hate seafood), salad and my great Aunty Irenes ambrosia salad. Dinner - turkey breast stuffed with cranberries and herbs, pork loin stuffed with apricots and macadamias (both cooked on bbq), roast vegies, apple sauce and gravy. Dessert - if anyone can fit it in - layered coconut, lime and mango mini sorbet bombes. Will try and take photos of the platters before they get devoured. While I am logged in here I also wanted to share Miss Kimmys year 10 formal photo with you all...she looked incredible and is turning into a very bright and level headed young adult.

Happy Easter to everyone!

The kids have gone out with their grandmother and aunty today so Mick and I have the house to ourselves...its very peaceful.

I decided to try out the caramel maple cupcakes in the current issue of Donna Hay and am super impressed with the results! Mine might not be as perfect looking as Donnas but the flavour is first class!

The cupcakes are made by melting together 60ml maple syrup, 160ml milk, 120g brown sugar, 150g butter and 75g white chocolate. Melt this and allow to cool.

In another bowl sift 150g plain flour and 1 teaspoon baking power. Mix in cooled chocolate mix, some vailla essence and 1 egg.

Pour into cupcake papers (mine made 12, but next time I won't fill the papers quite so full, so it will probably make 14 or 15.

Bake at 160degC for 25mins (recipe says 15 but mine were still quite runny at 15 mins).

Allow cupcakes to cool.

To make the wicked icing - melt together 175g brown sugar, 100g butter, pinch salt. Bring to high heat, add 60ml milk and some vanilla. Bring to boil and boil gently for 3 minutes. Stir and keep an eye on it or it will boil over and make a huge mess!

When the mix has boiled for 3 mins turn stove off and mix in 160g sifted icing sugar.

The recipe says you can ice the cakes straight away but i found the icing way too runny for this. Leave icing for about 20 - 30 mins. Mix well then ice your cakes.

Icing will set quite quickly and they look really special.

The top photo is my cakes the bottom is the Donna Hay ones...I am pretty happy with the results!

A couple of cooking dramas

This year has got off to a flying start...11th March already...wow!

I have been on holidays this week with a trip up to the central coast to visit family then some local catch ups with good friends.

My cooking has been a little haphazard this week. Made a creme brulee using the egg yolks I had in the freezer from an earlier pavlova making effort....brulees looked great and the top 3/4 was perfect, but at the bottom was a watery layer...concluded it was a result of the frozen yolks...never had any dramas before.

Also made my friend Gails apple and almond cake but substituted fresh peaches instead of apples...cake baked perfectly but by the time I served it the middle was soft...the moisture from the peaches had made it all gooey...i wasn't too worried...everyone came back for seconds.

We are having left overs tonight...after 2 nights in a row of dinner guests there is bits and pieces of everything left.

One very slack blogger....

Time has flown this year...have done plenty of cooking and bugger all blogging! Apologies.

Today I made the italian beef ragu from the www.taste.com.au website and my kitchen smells incredible.

Also made pasta to go with it...not sure if the texture will be ok...400g flour and 4 eggs and some salt and it was far too dry...added an extra egg yolk and it seemded to be ok but when i put it through the pasta machine it seemed really dry.

I guess I will know tonight when I cook it....fingers crossed!

Cooking slow down

Apologies to all who are following my blog...my cooking has been a little boring lately mainly due to work pressures. Hoping to get back into the swing of things this weekend now that our conference is over for another year.

Port Douglas was lovely but so humid...felt like I sweated bucket loads during the 4 days I was up there. Gorgeous place. Resort was great.

Wild mushroom risotto at Il Pescatore in the Sheraton Mirage at Port Douglas was delicious...so was the dark chocolate panna cotta.

Only saw 1 cane toad in the wild...very disappointed at that as I thought they would be everywhere.

The new Tefal pressure cooker

Santa was kind enough to bring me the new Tefal Minute pressure cooker...being unsure about how they work I was surfing the net looking for good pressure cooker recipes. Ended up finding a slow cooker one that sounded delicious. So tonight I made asian spiced chicken wings in my new pressure cooker in 12 minutes.

What a brilliant piece of cooking gear. 2 kgs of chicken wings, cut into wingettes, browned in the pressure cooker first, then a sauce of soy, diced onion, grated ginger, hoisin, tomato sauce and brown sugar poured over the top and cooked on high pressure for 12 mins.

The end result was tender, falling off the bone, very tasty chicken wings. Only thing I would do different next time is add some chilli and some star anise.

Was not sure if the kids would like them, but there is no left overs!

Bring on the next pressure cooker recipe....

Second pasta maker adventure

I decided to venture into the world of ravioli this past weekend...I had a few ideas about fillings but not a lot of confidence in what I had planned. Decided to wing it and it was either going to be a hit or a huge flop.

Made my pasta sheets, made a filling of ricotta, finely diced preserved lemon, egg yolk, salt, pepper and grated parmesan. It took a while to get into the rhythm of making the ravioli but once I got it going it was great. 5 tea bag sized pillows was enough for each adult.

I served them hot and poured over a nut brown butter and fresh mint sauce and a squeeze of lemon.

Delicious but next time I will be more careful with the ravioli...they got a bit sticky and a couple didn't want to come off the plate I had rested them on.

All part of the learning process...