D322: Ah! Bees!!

There's a buzz, buzz, buzz at the partyyyy...

So I committed to making our new little 2-year old a cake she would recognise and enjoy.  She loves Buzzbee and I'm very glad I chose this option.  It's a character that doesn't change much and I can't very a lot.  He has very few features and only two colours, and is based on a simple shape common to cakes.  He doesn't even have limbs.  Why I deliberated for so long over other options is a mystery.

After watching lots of YouTube videos of people making buttercream, and colouring, rolling and laying down fondant, I decided to dive in.

Two 12" cakes layered with bought ganache.

The cake is one I've previously used and quite like.  Well, love, actually - it's so quick!  I made up a chocolate variation for this cake.
Take one Nigella Lawson Awesome Vanilla Cake recipe; add 3 tbsp of cocoa to the dry ingredients and 1 tspn of instant coffee, dissolved in just enough water, to the liquids.
I used a lined 12" round tin and baked it at 350F for 50-55mins.  See the lighter spots on the top? It's done when those finally appear in the centre.

So I baked one cake during nap, had a shop (of course!) and then baked the second before dinner.

The face was put down first, on a thin layer of buttercream icing.
The features were placed on top afterward.

I did all the decorating and arranging after dinner, which took about 4 hours.

I prepared the buttercream first (a double helping: 800g pure icing sugar to 250g of whipped butter), but didn't colour it.
Then I put the buttercream aside and tackled the construction.

I put down a thin layer of buttercream to help the cake stick to the board, and placed the first cake down.  I took about half a cm off the top of this bottom layer to level it a little.  To flatten it completely would've taken a third of the bulk, which felt like a terrible waste, even though my hovering Hub and MIL felt it would've been very, very worthwhile.  So, while the bottom layer wasn't completely flat, the 500g of ganache did a great job levelling the difference between the layers, and the bottom of the upper layer barely curved at all.

I decided to do the face next, while my brain was still pretty good.  This face used about 750g of fondant and I used gel food colouring for both the fondant and the buttercream.

My post from a few days ago shows the templates I used for this cake.  They were made with a dinner plate for the face and some food containers for the eyes.  I used a Math-o-mat and trial-and-error for the mouth.

I also made a strip of paper that fits inside the top half of the face to help place the eyes.  The strip was a wide as the distance from the edge to the eye (about 15mm) and marked where the top of the eyes should align.

With the yellow band of 'fuzz' on the base.  I patted it with the prongs of a fork
to make it look fuzzy.   The fondant yellow is a richer colour than the bright stripe.

With the black buttercream.  Look at the widdle hand...

I wish I'd made the face features much thinner, instead of the 1/4" of the face.

I asked Hub to stay up with me by this stage, for company and moral support.  He was the one who looked up how to adhere fondant to fondant: with a paste made from melting a bit of fondant in hot water.


Making the black was so much fun.  Doing the two yellows was a careful task, adding a little bit at a time. (Two dips of Lemon yellow plus a little dab of Tulip red.) But with the black... well, you can hardly make it too dark.  That was fun.

The hands and feet were cut without a template.  I flipped the first hand and made the second by cutting around that; ditto with the feet.  I also chickened out of fingers, which Buzzbee normally has.  Midnight brain said no.

...and the widdle feet. 
Hard to see, but the hand on the right side is waving.

We added the antennae on the day - just some 12mm x 30cm black pipe-cleaners curled as you like, stuck into the ganache layer at an angle.

On Sunday morning Bub saw the cake in the kitchen and exclaimed "Wow! Big cake! That's amazing!"  It was a success already!

D308: Recipe - Easy Strawberry icing

This is an easy recipe for a lightly flavoured strawberry icing.  It's enough for a tray cake of about 23x30cm.

Ingredients

200g pure icing sugar

3-4 tbsp spoons of recently boiled water

2 tbsp strawberry jam (preferably a conserve, chunk free)

Red or pink food dye (optional)

Method

This is made the way most glazes are made but with added jam.  It's that simple. But just in case it's new to you, it goes like this: 

Boil the water.

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl.

Add 3 tbsp of water to the sugar, one at a time. Stop when it's still quite thick and hard to stir.  

Add the jam and stir well.

Add one more tspn of water if required.

Add a drop of food colouring if you like.

D287: Moussaka

We had this while visiting the in-laws' over Anzac weekend. It was so yum I stole the recipe and shall brazenly share it with you here soon.  

I haven't made moussaka before.  I would call lasagna a triple-bake - you pre-make two things before the third and final bake.  With moussaka, it's a quadruple-bake: eggplants, meat sauce and bechamel sauce are all made before layering it for the fourth bake.  We add a fifth cook to this recipe with a layer of sliced potato.  Yum!!

Seems the oven is pretty even...

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Here tis...

D235: Wee Apple Danishes!

My mum recently turned 80!  We had a lovely afternoon tea with family and I made these little apple Danishes, or turnovers, to share.  Unfortunately, I only made 18, which was too few for the 16 adults and children there.  I varied this from other recipes, but it's terribly simple. 

I recommend making the apple mix a few days before the day you plan on making the pastries.  The mix will also do for a pie.*

Need:

• 4 apples, cored, peeled, cut into 6 wedges, which are then sliced.
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• 1-2 tbsp sugar
• 1-2 tbsp plain flour
• 3 sheets of puff pastry for sweets
• Some milk for brushing
• Some jam for glazing (apricot is most popular, plum works too: anything seedless but probably not marmalade!)

To make the apple filling:

1. If you have one of those peeler/corer/spiral-slicer things for apples, it is perfect for cutting the apples for this project. Once you've peeled/cored/spiral-sliced the apple, cut the stacked spiral into 6 wedges.  About one of these stacks will do for each little Danish.
2. Put the cut apple in a snap seal bag.
3. Add the cinnamon and nutmeg to a fragrance you like.
4. Do this twice: put a tbsp each of sugar and flour in with the apple, then seal and gently toss the bag.
5. Put the bag in the fridge if you don't need it straight away.  I left it there for two days and it was pretty perfect.  Freeze it if you're cooking it much later than that.

On the day:

Apple! Not bacon!

1. Preheat a moderate oven (375°F/180°C).
2. Line your baking tray with grease proof paper.
3. Take a sheet of puff pastry (leave on the backing sheet) and put the others back in the freezer. (The pastry gets soft and 'melts' quite quickly.)
4. Cut your pastry sheet into 9 even squares by scoring it (don't cut the backing plastic) into three even parts vertically and then horizontally.
5. Arrange a spoon or two of apple mix diagonally on a small square of pastry. Pick up the empty corners and overlap the points on top of the apple.
6. Move it to your lined baking tray.
7. When you've filled your tray (I did 9 per tray), brush all the exposed pastry with milk and bake for 25 mins.
8. Prepare the next sheet of pastries while the first bakes, and so on with the third. 
9. Once the pastries are cooked and have cooled a little, heat your jam and glaze your pastries generously.

Enjoy!

*If you are going to freeze the apple mix for pie, freeze the bag in your pie dish. Then, when you're ready to bake, you can take it out of the bag and pop it straight into your pie dish with a snug fit!

D232: Recipe - Lemony Chicken risotto

So, for some reason, today I felt like trying this out.  Sorry there are no photos, but it was a nice risotto, I promise.

It probably already exists somewhere, but I haven't seen it so here I present what I tried...

Need:

• A few tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 small onion, diced
• 100g or so of pumpkin, diced to half-inch sizes
• 1 medium zucchini, sliced into quarters and chopped 1cm wide
• 300g chicken breast, sliced 
• 150g arborio rice 
• ¹/₂ cup pine nuts
• 1 cup of chicken stock*
• Boiling water
• Thyme
• Lemon zest (and/or juice)
• A handful of grated Parmesan
• Big handful of baby spinach leaves

To make:

1. In a large saucepan (pot sized is fine and enamel is excellent), heat the oil and soften the onions.
2. Add the vegetables and stir, browning them on a few sides.
3. Add the chicken and stir till it's cooked. 
4. Add the pine nuts and stir till heated through. (They brown fast, so don't wait too long.)
5. Add the rice and stir till it's all shiny.
6. Add the chicken stock and start the timer for 20 minutes. Stir until the stock is almost absorbed.  Over the next 20 mins, add a ¹/₄-¹/₂ cup of boiling water and stir each addition until it's absorbed.
7. Add thyme and lemon zest (and or juice) to taste.
8. Stir in the parmasean.
9. Add the spinach leaves before serving.

*Chicken stock can be very salty, especially the cubed kind.  I used half a cup of stock for this, but most people seem to like a stronger flavour than me.  Or maybe I don't tolerate salt as well.

D185-9: Lemon Impatience

While that is an excellent name for a dessert, it's not what this one is called.

This Lemon Drizzle Cake comes from lemons: recipes and remedies ("text by Sara Burford" it says, which is apparently different to being the author). It's the sort of book you'd find at a $5 discount bookstore, and I think that's where I got it, years ago.

This was my first experience at making my own self-raising flour.  According to CTAW, you add 10g (1 tbsp) of baking powder to 300g (2 cups) of plain flour.  It seemed to work out fine - hurrah!

I was surprised at the ingredient measurements as the weights were all less than the amounts suggested.  For instance, it asked for "225g/1 cup of unsalted butter" but I've always counted a cup of butter as 250g.  All the gram measurements were similarly less than expected, and somewhat explained in the back with a conversion table that I'd call just plain wrong.

Density anyone? 225ml what?

Then, after I'd read "4 eggs" I was surprised to see this go into a loaf pan.  I even lined the square tin I've used for all the brownie recipes, which have comparable amounts of flour, butter and eggs, but decided to do as the recipe said as I've never made a syrupy cake before.

In hindsight, I wish I had used the 23cm square tin.  I wasn't sure I'd be able to evenly drizzle the syrup across the size of a square cake but the pastry brush did a very good job and I shouldn't have worried.  It would've also meant that the syrup would've soaked further into the cake, and hopefully the heat would've gotten through the thickness better than on this occasion. 

At 50mins, the cake was beginning to burn on the edge but, eventhough the skewer came out clean, it sunk considerably (more shallow than when it started!) once the syrup was on.  We also cut it while still warm coz Hub and I couldn't wait for supper and as, as he said, you couldn't break it any more!

Here is the recipe, with [my adjustments].

Lemon Drizzle Cake

Ingredients

• Zest of 1 lemon (finely grated)
• 230g / 2 cups self-raising flour [300g]
• 225g / 1 cup sugar [250g]
• 225g / 1 cup of unsalted butter (softened) [250g]
• 4 eggs 

• Topping: juice of 1¹/₂ lemons and 110g / ¹/₂ cup of caster sugar [125g]

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas mark 4. Line a loaf tin with grease proof paper. 

Cake:

1. Place the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each new addition.
2. Add the lemon zest and sift in the flour. Mix together well.
3. Transfer the mixture into the loaf tin and level the top.  Place in the oven and bake for 45-50 mins. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool a little.

Topping:

1. Place the lemon juice and caster sugar in a bowl and mix together to make the topping. [Microwave for three 10sec bursts to help dissolve the sugar, but do not make it warm.]
2. Prick the still-warm cake with a fork and then [use a pastry brush to] drizzle the topping over the cake.  Leave in the loaf tin until completely cooled.
3. Once cooled, remove from the tin and serve.

Obviously, I haven't spent four days making a cake.  I've been chipping away at my secret gift too.

D181-4: Pastie Rolls

No, it didn't take me four days to make these.  The first three days were spent working on my secret.

But today saw the invention of Pastie Rolls! 

These are an effort to sneak vegetables into Bub's diet.  She's been slow to take on carrot and zucchini, and even potato is a bit hit & miss.  She likes meat though, and always has our pastries when we're out so I'm hoping she'll take to these.  I have ended up with an awful lot though - about 40 - so I might share them with a friend!

I am completely confident, sure and convinced that the likes of these have never ever been seen in any other place on the face of the earth in the history of cooking ever forever and ever after, amen.  I must surely be the first to have put these ingredients together in such a way, yes?  I'd better write it down then, ay.

These are for my Bub, who has few teeth, so I've grated the vegetables. I'd prefer to finely dice them to make it more 'Pastie'-like.

Pastie Rolls

Need:

Score into thirds

• 1kg puff pastry (6 square sheets)
• 500g beef mince (ground beef)
• 2 medium potatoes 
• 2 carrots
• 1 zucchini
• About 4 tbsp plain flour, in a saucer or plate
• About 2 tbsp of milk, aside
• Some water with a pastry brush

This takes about 20mins to prepare, 20-25mins per tray, plus construction time.

To make: 

Grated veggies

1. Heat your oven to 220°C (430°F).
2. Grate your unpeeled veggies (not the stalks) and squeeze out as much of the juice as you can.
   (If you prefer to finely dice your veggies, squeezing out the liquid isn't necessary.)
3. Thoroughly mix the grated veggies with the meat. (Using hands works well.)
4. Use a sharp knife to score or cut your pastry into three even strips.
5. Collect a small handful of the filling and squeeze out excess liquid again.
   Form it into a roll about as thick as your thumb (or my thumb - about half an inch across).
   
6. Roll this in the flour and place on a strip of pastry, near the edge.  Do this three or four more times until you've a long roll of filling going down the length of a strip of pastry.
7. Brush the opposite edge of the pastry with water.
8. Use the backing plastic to curl the pastry into a tube, rolling it closed and using the wet edge to seal the tube.
9. Cut the roll into lengths as you please.
10. Place on a tray covered with grease proof paper. Arrange the roll so that the overlapping pastry is underneath.  Glaze with milk, and put in the oven.
11. After 10mins, drop the heat to 190°C (375°F) and cook for a further 10-15mins.

One strip rolled, cut into thirds and upside-down!

Cutting the pastries into thirds makes 18 rolls.  If you cut these into:

~ Halves, you'll have 36 Pastie rolls;

~ Thirds, you'll have 54 Pastie rolls; and

~ Quarters, you'll have 72 Pastie rolls and should open a shop.

Yum! and Yum says Bub! Hurrah!

D174: Moosehead Brownies

All the brownie recipes I've tried thus far have melted the butter and chocolate together in the pan.  This one, however, using the creaming method.

Sometimes, when I can't be bothered (or haven't time) to wait for our frozen butter to melt I've zapped it a bit to speed things up.  Done too fast and you get melted butter, not softened butter, which separates the oil and translates to a shine in the cake of final product.  This shine is something I've realised I expect to see in brownies, but it's not in this one.  So it felt a bit more like a chocolate slice, but that essentially semantics: 

This

Is

A 

Great 

Brownie

Recipe

I made it for a grand final BBQ and none of it came home.

Apologies for not catching a snap of the cut brownies.  Pretty sure I can fix that soon.

Here is a typed version of the recipe, including a few extra weights.  Photo of a photocopy of the recipe is below, taken from The Age back in 2005 (!) who got it from Mollie Katzen's The Moosewood Cookbook.

Moosewood Fudge Brownies

Preheat oven 180°C/390°F

Need

• 155g dark chocolate
• 250g softened butter (not melted)
• 1 cup (180g) brown sugar
• 5 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 cup (150g) plain flour
• Buttered or lined 23x33cm pan

To make

1. Melt chocolate* and set aside
2. Cream butter and sugar and add eggs
3. Add vanilla
4. Beat in chocolate, then flour
5. Pour into pan
6. Bake for 20-30mins (mine was 25mins)
7. Let sit in pan for five mins before putting on rack to cool. Leave the cutting until serving time.

*To melt chocolate:

In microwave: Heat chocolate on medium/50% in 1min bursts, stirring after each.  Mine took three goes and then it stirred smooth. Chocolate holds it heat, as do many glass microwave, so use stirring when melting chocolate to avoid burning.

On stovetop: put some water in a small/medium saucepan and find a glass bowl that will sit in it's rim, without touching the water.  Put the chocolate in the glass bowl and bring the water to the boil. Stir the chocolate with the water simmering/boiling beneath it until it's smooth.   
Do not get any water in your chocolate - it'll seize up and become useless (except for sulky-spoon-licking on the couch coz you ruined your chocolate).

D167: Serendipity

Hub doesn't understand why I like watching telly sometimes.

I can see his point: Ads are ridiculously annoying, inane and loud. But then, we have a mute button, and other channels to entertain us in the gaps.

Sometimes I can flick on the telly and find a show for what ails me, such as an Antiques Roadshow, or a celebrity I like on a talk show, or even an idiot of recent politics at whom I can rant and work out a few demons.  

Hub gets frustrated that we have so many good shows to watch on the computer - dozens, in fact - yet I'll watch a telly rerun of Friends instead of a Supernatural, Black Books, The West Wing*, or even Buffy.  

What's worse, sometimes I'll want to watch the movie that's on.  Insult to injury, not only may I have seen it before, but we'll already have it to watch ad free!  (If I haven't seen it before, Hub wishes I would get the movie and then watch it ad free, but what if it's not as good as I thought...?)

Poor guy. I'm all "I like that this movie is on now! And I don't have to start it or do anything!" And what good fortune, that amongst all the rubbish and Lethal Weapons, here is a movie I like, or even have affection for! Nope, it's a sign! I shall watch this and enjoy the Magic-Faraway-Tree-ness of the discovery.  Joy!

Serendipity adds a certain I don't know what to things. And that's how it happened with this recipe, which arrived with our fruit and veggies from Aussie Farmers Direct, just as I'd looked at the pumpkin in the freezer and wondered what I would do with it...

I made a double batch, with just under what I needed for the pumpkin, and I had Jap, not butternut. Anyhoo, the first batch are a bit solid in the middle, so shall stay home, but the second batch I left in for a few minutes longer so hopefully they'll be liked at our family gathering today.

I don't really like veggie-things-as-sweet-meals, which include pumpkin or sweet potato pie, but these are reeeeeeally nice!  They're a little bit dense, possibly over-mixed due to a big batch?  Not sure, but I'd do them again.

And! I know my numbers have jumped a bit: I've some backtracking to do. :)

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* I don't think I could watch a random West Wing episode.  I think I'd need to watch it from start to end all over again, for the third time!

D143: Well, well, well... if it isn't the old alphabet...

I've had it in mind to make bikkies of ones, exclamation marks and the letters of Bub's name for her first birthday, and ice them too, of course.  A few weeks ago I bought some Fred & Friends Letter Pressed Cookie Cutters and Letter Pressed Numbers.  The cutters and the boxes were full of promise and I was delightedly keen to go.  

Tomorrow were seeing our family for Bub's birthday, so I'm doing a test run for next weekend when we see Hubs family and aaaaaall our friends (well, many of them).  I'd like for the biscuits to be the party favour, but I'll skip it altogether if they don't come up to scratch.

Below are some tips for working with this product.  

TLDR? Roll out the dough, and cut and stamp the biscuits before chilling. Stamp the biscuits deeply, chill them for a full 30mins, bake till browned (for me, 12mins).

I'm familiar with the CTAW biscuit recipe (which rises quite a bit) so decided to try the one recommended with the stamps.  Here it is, somewhat summarised.  I had to make changes anyway, so am taking liberties with the presentation*:

Fred's Favourite Sugar Cookies*

• 1 cup (250g) butter
• 1 sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 cups flour

1. Cream the butter and sugar till fluffy
2. Add egg and vanilla, mix thoroughly
3. Sift together dry ingredients
4. Add dry ingredient to mixture in two batches. Ensure it's thoroughly mixed.
5. Split sought in two and roll out each between two sheets of parchment or grease proof paper. 
6. Chill for 30mins.
7. Use stamps to cut and impress dough.
8. Bake for 8-10 mins, or until biscuits are browned around the edges.

Steps 5 - 7 are where I had concerns.

The stamps have rounded edges and are not that sharp. Even if I was to create a rectangular shape, and even if I could perfectly tessellate the stamps into that rectangle, there would still be off-cuts at the corners and under the stamp edge.

I wasn't sure of the purpose of the chilling.  Was it a binding/resting step? Or was it to control the spread and rise of the biscuits?  If so, that progress would be lost when the offcuts were kneaded, re-rolled and cut again.

So, I experimented. I rolled, cut and pressed all my biscuits and lay them on parchment in three batches.

The first batch was not chilled.  Also, I was still learning how deeply to press the stamps.

It was doing the 1 when I realised how much deeper I should be pressing.

The second batch were well pressed and chilled for 10mins.

See the slight bulge on the sides? That's how hard you press.

The last batch was well pressed, chilled for the full 30mins, and baked 12mins.

Finally, she figures it out.  Hope these ones are crunchy too.

So there you have it!  Press well, chill well, bake well.
I wonder if chilling the CTAW bikkie recipe would have the same effect...

In other news, I won't have my sewing project ready for my family's gathering.  If you've been reading for the last few days you've probably figured out that I've been sewing a birthday bunting for Bub.  I'm really pleased with how its going, but I've only done three letters of 18 and some flags.  This makes me a quite sad really, but I should spend the morning making a second thing for the arvo tea and icing these bikkies (more practise for next week). I won't have time to sew on the rest of the letters, the rest of the flags and sew the bunting together.  I don't know where the day went :(

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*It's worth mentioning, the recipe on the Letters box was wrong.  It listed "1 egg" twice and didn't list flour at all.  If I hadn't bought the Numbers box - with a recipe that was the same in every other way - I couldn't have used their recipe.  Admittedly, this did not bode well for the quality of the product, but Bub slept for 7hrs in a row last night so optimism lined the day.

D117: Putting the luck in 'pot luck'

Fennel, Chicken & Veggie risotto

I've led a pretty sheltered life in the world of food.  Life on the farm was mostly meat-and-three-veg.  Italian was spag bol; Indian was kedgeree; Chinese was fried rice.   This is not me complaining - I made spag and fried rice myself.  And I loved Mum's cooking.  Every single meal, in my memory, was a comfort meal.  From the crumbed lamb cutlets and roasts to the fish fingers, egg bread not to mention the desserts. 

Have I not mentioned this before?  Well, if I had to choose I think my favourite would be crepes, which we had with syrup and with lemon & sugar.  I would have seven: three with each topping, one rolled and cut, one cut flat and one rolled and eaten with fingers, plus one that way I felt like today. Self-saucing chocolate pudding was good too. And chocolate steamed pudding, or college pudding, or upside-down pineapple cake, or chocolate cake, or a crumble, or golden syrup dumplings, or baked apples, or apple sponge, or lemon delicious... and if, somehow, a hot desert wasn't on the cards, there was always a bottled fruit in the pantry to go with ice-cream.  Or we could make ice-cream sandwiches with wafers and Milo.  Or have bananas and ice-cream... I'm telling you, life was grand.  Mum is awesome.

Anyway, I digress.
Here's what I was trying to get to today...  What the hell do you do with fennel?!

So, I was going to go into great detail about my slow adaption to a regular food delivery service and how our household shopping habits have had to adjust.  I'll cut to the chase though and admit that today, after our third delivery this morning*, we went to the supermarket to buy meats and a few more fruits for the week.  I wish I'd been able to get these from the delivery, but the fruit and veggies arrive after Thursday's order closes, so when I don't know what's coming I'm not sure how to prepare.  Maybe, one day, we'll be one of those households that always has some chicken and beef in the freezer, just in case.  At the moment though, our fresh food is bought as needed.

Last week, our Aussie Farmers Direct Couples box included half a red cabbage. This is starting to look a bit forlorn in the fridge's bottom drawer, as I've not yet  found a use for it.  (Yeah, live up to your name now, Crisper.)
This week we got apples, bananas, mandarins, oranges (which Bub has just cottoned onto), a Chinese wombok cabbage, another bag of carrots, another bag of potatoes, celery, coriander, red onions, lettuce, tomatoes and a fennel.  The potatoes are fine; I'm planning chips with those now that I know Bub will eat them.   The carrots and onions will keep, and the fruit is easily taken up with purees, brekkies and desserts.  But the rest?  Hmmm... I really didn't want another abandoned veggie in the fridge!

So this is what I came up with: Risotto!

Need**:

• 1 onion (any colour), diced
• 1 fennel bulb, grated or minced
• 300g chicken mince
• 3 small carrots, diced
• Half a wombok cabbage, sliced or shredded
• 1/2 cup of baby peas
• 1 1/5 cup aborio rice
• 1.5L chicken stock
• A lemon

To make:

1. Fry the onion and fennel in a large frying pan till soft, add minced chicken and stir till cooked.
2. Add carrot and cabbage.  
3. Add rice and stir till that all wet.
4. Add 1L of the stock and stir till its absorbed.
5. Add peas.
6. Add one cup of liquid at a time, stirring till each is absorbed.  Stop adding liquid when the rice is cooked.
7. Serve with a slice of lemon.

I almost added dill, but I'm even less familiar with that flavour and didn't want to find out it was a bad idea on a big pan of made food.  Of course, you should season your meal as you like.

As soon as the box arrived, after I'd looked at the contents with Bub and said "Last one of these I think!", I started searching with "fennel cabbage recipe".  Amongst all the coleslaw recipes, I saw someone had written something like "Don't be put off by the fragrance of the fennel, it lessens on cooking."  Thank goodness, because I found it quite aniseedy when chopping and I wasn't a fan at all.  But this?  This I'd have again.  Good thing too, coz there's about 6 serves of it!

Maybe we will do another Couples box though... We'll see what's left come Tuesday! :)


*So, quick note: AFD deliver fruit & veg on Wednesday only.  Diary, bakery things, meat, deli, meals, pasta, and all the rest are delivered on Monday and Thursday.  Monday's order closes Sat @1pm, but the other two are 1pm the day prior.

**This risotto is cheese free.  We can't do cheese at the moment with Bub's tummy, but I'm not sure it would work with this recipe anyway.  The creaminess is still there thanks to the frequent stirring of the aborio rice.

Day 27: Apple roses

I found this recipe via a friend's Facebook page. Both are awesome. The recipe is exactly the sort of thing I like - easy, with apples and pastry. The FB page is pretty much bakery glamour shots.

I had it in my mind that I was going to make these today. (And it just occurred to me that friends we saw this afternoon will realise we didn't bring our treats to share. Awkward turtle. Anyhoo!) Even though we had a thing to go to this afternoon, and Hub let me sleep in, I wilfully stuck to my plan knowing it would keep me busy right up to going out the door. I even remembered, when I was calculating the time it would take, to forget to think about how fiddly the assembly would be.

Thank you daggy container-with-cutting-attachments thingy. Couldn't've done it without you.

The recipe called for one sheet of pastry for three apples. I used three Granny Smiths but easily used two sheets, with the same amount of sugar coating. Krisztina must've had larges sheets.

It also says to put them on a baking tray or in a cupcake-type tray. I imagined the apple would release a lot of juice so I used some patty pans in a cupcake tray. But I think two things could've impacted that:

1. I over cooked the apple by about half a minute and I think it took on a lot of liquid. They only need to be softened, not cooked. They were still workable so nothing huge lost but I wonder how much difference that made. I possibly didn't 'dry' them adequately on the tea towel either.

2. I didn't attempt to seal the pastries at the bottom. I let the apple stay exposed at the base so the juice was always going to go somehow here rather than pool in the pastry. Maybe if I'd fashioned them so that the base was all pastry, and used a tray, they would've browned better and been crispier.
Food for thought for next time.

Another disclosure: I didn't have any apricot jam with which to warm and glaze the pastries. Instead I used raspberry, blueberry and cranberry jam, which gave them a lovely rosy hue - a lovely side-effect!

Nevertheless, it's a puff-pastry-with-apple-&-cinnamon recipe. Rather hard to go wrong flavour-wise. Mine aren't as pretty as Krizstina's but I won't be throwing them out!

Hmmm. If I keep at this baking thing, I may actually start having standards.