Zucchini Bread

This is one of my true favourite recipes! This came from a special book by a Japanese version of Martha Stewart (she is much older than her though) who is an American/French baking pioneer. She lived overseas in the 80s due to her husband's duty as a Transport Ministry　bureaucrat.



I always borrowed this book from the libraries as a kid and it was such an inspiration for me! I still would love to learn American baking at some point when there is an opportunity.

This quick bread tastes very much like carrot cake. If you don't like to microwave, you could easily bake it in the oven (180degrees for about 30 mins).

Zucchini Bread recipe

Beat 2 eggs and 1 cup of brown sugar in a blender.

Add 1/2 cup sunflower oil (any vegetable oil but olive oil) and 1 1/2 tsps vanilla. Blend well.

Fold in 2 cups grated zucchini (liquid well squeezed), grated rind of 1 lemon, 3/4 cup chopped walnuts, 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 2tsps cinnamon, and 1 tsp nutmeg (sifted together).

Pour the mixture in a microwave-proof baking dish and cook it for about 5 mins at high power and 13 - 15 mins at low power.

ENJOY!!

Mini Moist Mandarin Cakes

I forever have a problem with mandarins because I grew up in the area where mandarins were one of the dominant fruits grown and we kept receiving sooooooooooooooo many of them every winter and simply could not get rid of them. We(there were 6 people in my family!!!!!!!) literary had to eat them every single day and still had problems with finishing the bloody things.

Anyway, I am still traumatised by the sight of those unfinished boxes full of mandarins but trying to get over it.

So, I decided to use them for baking! These little cakes turned out to be much nicer than the actual mandarins (to me at least)....!!! These taste exactly like orange & almond cakes.

Mini Moist Mandarin Cakes

Ingredients:
125g butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups almond meal
1/2 plain flour
2 eggs
Juice of 1 mandarin
Grated rind of 1 mandarin

For the mandarin syrup:
Juice of 1-2 mandarin/s
1/4 cup sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Cream butter and sugar. Beat well.
2. Add eggs, mandarin juice and rind and mix well.
3. Stir in almond meal and flour.
4. Pour the mixture into muffin tin or any small cake tins you've got. (I used a kind of financier looking tins) Bake them for about 15 - 20 mins.
5. Mix the ingredients for syrup. Once cakes are baked, remove them from the tins and pour the syrup over hot baked cakes.

Addictive Kebab Shop Salad

I used to work at a school right next to a little shopping centre. One of the few things we honestly looked forward was chatting over a cup of coffee at a kebab shop. One of my colleagues was quite fond of this power salad that is basically a mixed up of all the kebab ingredients but it tastes soooooooooo good!

I only had this salad few times but really liked it and tried to make it at home. This is pretty close to the real one I think....

That Kebab Shop's Power Salad

Ingredients:
Mixed salad leaf (baby spinach leaves or chopped lettuce will do) - as much as you like
Chopped and fried bacon or cut BBQ chicken pieces
Tin pineapple pieces
Chopped black olives
Sliced mushrooms
Grated carrot
Sliced red onion
Grated Tasty cheese

For the sauce:
Tomato sauce & Mayonnaise - same amount
Tabasco (Optional)


1. Throw all the ingredients into a salad bowl.
2. Mix the ingredients for the sauce. You could add some lemon juice to the sauce if you like.
3. Enjoy the salad with the sauce!

Gluten-free brownies

I've been utilising my holiday to experiment with new recipes in order to widen my baking repertoire and also to improve my existing good old recipes! It's been so much fun and I've been amazed how many different kinds of ingredients are available when it comes to gluten-free and or or organic baking. We are so spoiled to have all those choices - by the way, I LOVE gluten!!

Anyway, it's always good to offer something different for those who can eat only gluten free goodies, so I'm trying to come up with at least 2 or 3 good gluten-free recipes.

The other day, when I went to check out the markets, I saw spelt brownies. I looked gluten-free information on the net and found that spelt is actually not gluten-free. So I thought a bit and decided to experiment with buckwheat flour. It's full of goodness and is really close to my culture, so it'd be my kind of ingredient:) The only problem with buckwheat is that it's so overpowering and it interferes with other ingredients. I'm hoping that with this brownie - so rich in chocolate and cocoa flavour and a hint of Kahlua, you wouldn't smell too much of buckwheat. It still does have that flavour tiny bit but I think it's not that noticeable.

I may try to substitute almond meal for other gluten-free flour so that people with nut allergy can eat this too:)

Gluten-free brownies

250 g unsalted butter
300 g dark cooking chocolate
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
3/4 cup almond meal
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tablespoon Kahlua leaguer

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. Grease and line a 4cm deep, 18cm x 25cm slice pan. Shift the almond meal, buckwheat flour and cocoa powder together.
2. Place the butter and chocolate in a saucepan on low heat, stirring occasionally until they melt. Remove the pan from the heat and add the sugar, mixing well to combine.
3. Place the eggs in the bowl and beat well. Slowly beat in the chocolate mixture, then fold in the almond meal, buckwheat flour and cocoa powder. Beat well until combined.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake in the oven for about 30 mins or until the top has formed a crust but the centre is still slightly gooey when a skewer is inserted. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the pan before turning out.

Apricot & Walnut Soda Bread

This morning, I had a craving for the amazing breads from the Flour Power bakery but felt so lazy that couldn't be bothered driving all the way to West End just for bread. So, I decided to go for an easy option - making this good old soda bread (a recipe from Japan)!

The original recipe said to use figs but I didn't have any, so I used dried apricots instead. I would have loved to use some sort of healthier flour such as organic wholemeal, etc but the texture of this dough is pretty dense already so decided not to use anything like that. Would be good to experiment with some different kinds of flour and to find a trick to make it still work with flours that give denser texture to dough!!

You'd be able to enjoy this soda bread within 40mins or so after you get up so I totally recommend it for a lazy Sunday brekkie/brunch :)

Apricot(Fig) & Walnut Soda Bread

150 g dried apricots(figs), roughly chopped
50 g chopped walnuts
250 g plainflour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup plain yoghurt
1/2 cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar together in a bowl.
3. Add the apricots and walnuts then make a well in the centre. Add the yoghurt and milk and mix everything by hand till everything is just combined.
4. Form a log and criss-cross the top, then bake in the 170 degrees oven for 30 mins. Serve the bread with butter and jam if you like.

Cinnamon & sultana snail rolls

Freshly baked scrolls are one of the things I can never resist when I go past bakeries. As usual, I thought if I make my own, I can have as many as I want, so here they are!

This is originally from Bill Granger's "Sydney Food" but I usually put all the dough ingredients into my breadmaker and get the machine to do the kneading. Then all I have to do is sprinkle the cinnamon sugar, roll the dough up and then bake the scrolls.

If you like something a bit different, you could add 1 teaspoon cardamom with all other dough ingredients.

Cinnamon & raisin snail rolls (makes 12)

dough
14g dried yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1 cup milk
125g unsalted butter, cubed
4 cups plain flour
a pinch of salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup sultanas


80g unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup raw sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon


1. To make the dough, put all the dough ingredients into your breadmaker. Set the breadmaker to "knead" mode and leave it until it is finished. Put the dough into a large bowl and leave it until the dough has doubled in size.

2. Punch the dough down and turn out onto a lightly floured bench. Roll it into a 23 x 60cm rectangle. Brush generously with the melted butter and sprinkle raw sugar and cinnamon evenly over the surface.

3. Roll the dough up from the short end, swiss-roll style, to make a log. Cut the roll, seam-side-down, into 2cm thick slices between each slice. Cover loosely to and leave to rise until doubled. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

4. Bake the rolls for 20 - 30 mins. They freeze well if you can't finish them all at once.

That Bailey's Marbled Cheesecake

This is the one I made for the cocktail party the other day.
I found the original recipe on the net but wanted to add some stuff to it, so here it is. I usually don't write the recipes down so it's approximate but hope this works for you.

Bailey's Marbled Cheesecake

1/2 cup butter, melted
2 cups biscuits(I used vanilla and chocolate ones)
500g cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
250g sour light cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup Baileys Irish cream
100g dark chocolate, melted

1. Line a 9-inch springform tin with baking paper. For the crust, roll the biscuits with a rolling pin into crumbs and combine them with melted butter. Press firmly evenly over bottom of the tin.

2. Mix cream cheese with sugar. Beat eggs one at a time. Add vanilla, sour cream and Baileys and mix well.

3. Take about 1/4 of the mixture into the smaller bowl and mix it with the melted chocolate.

4. Pour the plain mixture into the prepared tin and then pour the chocolate mixture on top. Make a marbled design by gently swirling batter with small knife.

5. Bake in a preheated 160 degrees oven for 1 hour. Refrigerate the cake overnight.

Our favourite pikelets recipe

We love these for weekend brekkies!!!
Recently we've been harvesting our first lemons from Ben's grandma so we have more excuses to make these pikelets:)

Pikelets

1 cup self-raising flour
pinch salt
1/4 teaspoon bi-carb soda
3/4 sour milk (3/4 cup milk + 1 tablespoon lemon juice)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon melted butter

1. Sift dry ingredients, add sugar.

2. Mix to a smooth batter with beaten egg and milk, add melted butter.

3. Heat and grease pan, drop batter and cook until bubbly on top, light brown underneath. Turn, cook other side.