recipe Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Handmade by Carolyn

fun with gingerbread

25/12/2014 12:46 pm \ 19 Comments \ Carolyn

*sings* Have yourself a very gingerbread-y Christmas…

Gingerbread! Gingerbread madness 🙂
I love the stuff but I pretty much never make it. Until I do and then it seems like I become temporarily obsessed and will make a lot, maybe to compensate for not having made it in, like, ten years or so. Madness.
See, I decided I would make gingerbread men to give for Christmas gifts this year, and so made a big batch. See above.
Then I thought it would also be nice to make a gingerbread house for Christmas Day too. So drew plans and made a few more batches of gingerbread. Can I just say; designing gingerbread houses is a lot of fun! A lot more fun than actually putting them together, haha.
Mine is a pretty wonky little house but hey! shrug. My family politely admired it! And I’ve learnt a few tricks, from my mistakes.

For example; if, like me, you’re a gingerbread house newbie, don’t try to make it symmetrical and perfect. There lies inevitable failure and grief at your own ineptitude. Just aim for charming wonkiness and asymmetry right from the get-go! and then you may happily bask in the success of your ploy, mwahaha.

Also, roll and cut out the house pieces straight on the baking sheet. Picking up and tranferring the pieces can skew them a tiny bit. Ergo, wonkiness.

Make the walls thicker than the roof pieces, to stably hold that thing up.

Also, pipe any fiddly decorative curlicues on the flat, before construction. Seriously, that bizz is freaking difficult enough already, no need to make it more so.

Then at some point I looked my first set of gingerbread men and judged them to be a bit big and not very cute at all; really a totally unacceptable gift! I decided that only cute, mini gingerbread men would do. Went out and bought a new, mini gingerbread man cutter, and made stacks of baby ones. Was satisfied with these.

I’ve kept the rejected big ones with green buttons for my family, and the silver- and pink-buttoned ones are the good ones, that I gave away. Yes, my poor family have no choice but to eat big, non-cute gingerbread men, awwww! I’m such a bad mum 🙂

I used a recipe from my mother’s Scandinavian cookbook, that she has had since the 70’s. I doubt it is in print anymore so I’ve reproduced the ingredients here:

Gingerbread

100g butter

225g dark brown soft sugar

1tblsp each of ground ginger and cinnamon

265g treacle

900g flour

1tblsp bicarb of soda

approx 235mL milk

Melt and mix the butter, sugar and treacle, then add the dry ingredients all at once and mix in thoroughly. Stir in the milk, then knead to a consistent dough-y texture.

Roll out to desired shapes. These quantities make quite a lot of dough, enough for a small house.

Bake at 175C, for approx 12-15 minutes, depending upon the size and thickness of the pieces.

Join the house pieces with toffee, made by dissolving and gently boiling plain white sugar until it reaches the hard crack stage.

Icing: beat 1 egg white until stiff, mix in 500g icing sugar. Note; not “icing mix” which will not set properly. Add in a coupla squeezes of lemon juice to get a good piping consistency.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Christmas, food, recipe

Salted caramel bon-bons

24/12/2013 3:54 am \ 25 Comments \ Carolyn

This year I’ve made an army of salted caramel choccies to give to everyone. Salted caramel is the flavour of the minute around here. So hot right now! It’s funny, a few years ago the very thought would have provoked ewww!’s, but now everyone here is jumping happily on the salted caramel bandwagon and totally digging it. I do too 🙂 I fudged together my own very simplified version. They seemed to work OK. Actually, unfortunately? they are delicious; too delicious. I had to gift-wrap them up really early to keep them safe 😀

Now it’s only one sleep to go, so please allow me to take this opportunity to wish everyone who reads my blog a very joyous Christmas and a safe and happy day filled with plenty of laughter and love… and maybe a bonbon or two 😉
Cheers!

Salted caramel bonbons

1 cup whipping cream
2 cups white sugar
200g sweetened condensed milk
30g butter
2tsp salt
about 300g dark chocolate, for coating

Dump everything, except for the chocolate, together in a saucepan and stir constantly over a low heat until all the sugar and salt are dissolved. If it seems like it might start boiling take it off the heat immediately and keep stirring to dissolve.

Once dissolved, allow the mixture boil without stirring, for about ten minutes, or until golden brown, and a little bit drizzled into a bowl of cold water goes nicely chewy and caramel-ly.

Immediately place the saucepan in a sink of cold water, to cease the cooking process.

When it has cooled down a little, pour it out onto baking paper, and when cool enough to handle, cut off chunks, roll them into a ball and dip into melted chocolate using a skewer.

Finish with an extra sprinkling of salt on top.
These quantities make about 45 bonbons, give or take.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: food, recipe

peppermint creams

29/04/2013 11:51 am \ 34 Comments \ Carolyn

So, after that dessert in the My Kitchen Rules final last night; I felt the need.
The need…
for Peppermint and Chocolate!
I re-visited a recipe from this book…

I’ve had this book for quite a long time 🙂

These yummies are so easy.

Basically, the recipe is a stiffly beaten egg white, with a bit of peppermint essence and lots of sifted icing sugar mixed in, and kneaded in. One egg white took almost all of this 500g bag of pure icing sugar… there was about one cup leftover after.

You let the rounds dry out for a few hours, then…

Hey presto! after dinner mints.

I made big ones, and small ones. And can I just say; yum. I’m allowing myself one small one per day, and hopefully the family will polish them all off before my willpower breaks 😉

I would definitely describe myself as one of the worst cooks in the world. I’m more of a “meal assembler”. But these are easy enough… you could say; child’s play!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: food, recipe

Frozen yoghurt

17/04/2013 1:41 am \ 21 Comments \ Carolyn

We are a frequent-yoghurt-eating family, but sometimes I get a half a tub of yoghurt sitting in the fridge getting too close to its use-by date. Well I can’t have that!! Just like with fabric, I cannot bear the idea of throwing food out, and I just have to find a way to use it…

I adapted this recipe here, and it couldn’t have been easier. I don’t have an icecream maker, nor did I “strain” my yoghurt though. I just tipped the sugar and vanilla essence directly into the half tub of yoghurt and froze it in its own container.
I kinda guesstimated while I was making my batch but I reckon a good ratio to work with is:

1/2 cup of sugar, to every
3 cups of yoghurt,
plus 1/2 tsp pure vanilla essence
Stir it all together thoroughly to dissolve the sugar and then stick it in the freezer. I gave it a good stir every hour or so, to break up the ice crystals, for the first five hours, and then left it overnight. The next morning the texture is absolutely perfect; it is not too sweet and deliciously tangy.

No icecream maker required! 🙂

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: food, recipe

Extras…

29/12/2012 11:00 pm \ 30 Comments \ Carolyn

Hmmm, I’m going to have to squeeze a few lobbed-in-together Christmas-make posts, or I am not going to finish this biz before the end of the year!
Firstly; as I am sure everyone is aware 😉 Christmases here are HOT! Here in Perth; we delighted in temperatures of 40C on the day, and joy of joys; the entire following week has, and will be, also over 40C. Monday promises a cool change of 38C, lol.
Literally, I’ve been in my bathers almost all day :S
Anyhoo, Christmas Day is generally synonymous with cold seafood, chilled bubbly, cold ham, and refrigerated fruit platters, since the very thought of firing up the oven to cook a traditional hot roast anything, that is going to heat up the kitchen and the house even more than it is already, is just too awful for words…. however, some traditional European dishes have snuck their way into our hearts and been adopted, and one of my favourites is Siena cake.
It is a deliciously rich, flavoursome and chewy concoction and makes a terrific gift; it lasts happily in the fridge for weeks, that’s if it remains uneaten for that long. This year I multiplied the recipe by 4 to make a ginormous batch, enough for a cake for everyone else in the family, so everyone got a Siena cake as well as the owls.
I use a simplified version of the recipe from the Italian cookbook published in the 90’s by the Australian Women’s Weekly, the original is reproduced here

Siena cake

125g (4oz) slivered almonds
125g (4oz) hazelnuts
60g (2oz) glace apricots
60g (2oz) glace pineapple
60g (2oz) mixed peel
2/3 cup plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon cinnamon
60g (2oz) dark chocolate
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
icing sugar

Spread almonds and hazelnuts on oven tray, put into moderate oven 5 to 7 minutes, until lightly golden. Chop hazelnuts roughly, combine in bowl with almonds, chopped apricots, chopped pineapple, chopped mixed peel, sifted flour, sifted cocoa and cinnamon, mix well.

Put sugar and honey in separate saucepan, stir over low heat until sugar has dissolved, brushing down sides of saucepan with brush dipped in hot water to dissolve any sugar crystals. Bring to boil, reduce heat, simmer uncovered approximately 5 minutes or until syrup forms a soft ball when a few drops are dropped into a glass of cold water. Drop chocolate in and stir well to melt then add to fruit and nut mixture, mix them well.

Spread mixture quickly and evenly into 20cm round cake tin lined with baking paper. Bake in moderately slow oven 35 minutes, remove from oven, cool in tin. Turn out, remove paper. Wrap in aluminium foil.

Leave at least one day before cutting. Before serving, sift icing sugar thickly over top.

Nice to have on hand for if friends spontaneously pop over for celebratory drinkies during the Christmas-New Year’s break unexpectedly…. I cut mine into very slender 1cm slices and serve them as pictured at the top, for a decadent morning tea or an after dinner treat.

Random trivia: actually our dog was supposed to be named Siena too; but an extra “n” snuck in there somehow when all her papers were filled out and registered. I blame Sienna Miller entirely.

Another coupla makes; inspired by Novita, I made some cute little novelty coin purses for my littlest nieces and nephew. These are the Feed the Animals coin purses, from the Straight Stitch Society.

They are fully lined with the same cotton used for the “food” zip pull, and were made all from scraps and small odds and bobs in my fabric and button stash, and I bought one short zip, from Spotlight.
Following tradition, I slipped a coin into each purse before wrapping them 🙂

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: accessories, food, recipe

Bread

16/12/2012 6:00 am \ 38 Comments \ Carolyn

Have I ever mentioned before that I married a very clever man? Maybe, but if not then.. I have. A very clever man indeed.
Well, he married me, didn’t he?
Haha! kidding!
He has done some other clever things too 😉

Including making bread.

Now let me explain… we are not foodies, oh nooo!.. although in fact I have been “making bread” for the family for about fifteen years; only I use a bread-maker which is kinda cheating, and not really like making your own bread at all. So, while I do “make my own bread”, please note the use of self-mocking inverted commas. Well, you see; Miss Frugality, in her zeal for DIY, went and bought a breadmaker, even though it was expensive and she is allergic to kitchens. Fortunately it turned out to be so easy even the worst cook in the world could cope, and the cost per use is probably down into the micro-cents by now. So, the kiddies grew up on that deliciously chewy, crusty, chocka-with-seeds stuff it produced and we quickly discovered we just could never go back to that crap masquerading laughably as “bread” sold in the supermarket, ever again… so the homemade bread habit has continued to this day. Chuck in the breadmix, water, yeast, press a few buttons, a few hours later, hey presto, a yummy loaf awaits. Simple as that. Easy peasy. And domestic contentment ensues.
But recently my husband read a book “52 Loaves” by William Alexander; which outlined the author’s grail-like quest to make bread the traditional way, truly from scratch. Very entertaining read, by the way.
My husband, not a man easily impressed, was impressed. He was like, “Challenge Accepted!!”
Yes, in case you’re wondering, my husband is an inquisitive as well as a competitive man. On those personality thingie tests, he always comes out as a lion; an A-type; a born-leader; a go-getting, never-admit-defeat, super-intelligent dynamo of doing-ness; or whatever.
Anyhow, he found himself compelled to make bread, too. The hard way. And like just about anything my husband attempts, he succeeded.
So.
He started out by developing his own starter.
You begin with blueberries… yes, really. Why? Well, blueberries are one of the few substances which are still sold today with their protective layer of wild yeast intact. That white, slightly powdery substance coating the surface of blueberries?? well, that is an atmospheric fungus, a naturally occurring thing, that has been used for centuries by our ancestors to grow the leavening agent for bread. Nowadays, most of us are lazy and use either dried yeast or a pre-made starter developed by somebody else, but fortunately for the apocalypse-minded amongst us: the materials are still at hand for those who wish to make use of ancient techniques and go the pure unassisted route towards making their own bread. Can you make your own yeast? why yes you can!

It also occurs on other fruits and veggies, you sometimes see it on grapes and apples here but most of the time it gets polished off before they reach the grocer.

Craig soaked a punnet of blueberries in pure (chloride and fluoride free) water to harvest, or in old terms; “catch” the yeast. Then he combined this “live” water with an equal quantity of flour, and left it to develop. After a few days he had a thick bubbly paste with a pleasantly fertile, brewery-like aroma.

This is the levain, and it lives in our fridge. In colder climates people keep it in a warm spot on the window sill, but we are in a very very hot climate so it would get bloated and whiffy in no time at all on our windowsill! You need to feed and tend to it every few days to keep it in good shape.
As you can imagine, in ancient times the levain was like gold in a family; it was their ticket to the staff of life and it was essential for it to be kept well maintained. The health of a family’s levain was literally the key to the health of the family!
Obviously we are a very fortunate first world family whose survival is not dependent on the survival of our levain; but after all the effort that went into producing this stuff you can be sure Craig is taking blinkin’ good care of it!
He baked the bread on pizza stones. Fortunately we’ve had these already a Christmas gift one year I think.
Incidentally I was allotted about one nanosecond in which to take this photograph… something to do with “YOU’RE LETTING ALL THE HOT AIR OUT!“… or something or other…

and then … bread.

As they say in the ad biz; Un Serving Suggestion…

And was it tres delish?
Oh, oui.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Craig, random life stuff, recipe

A Public Service Announcement

16/11/2012 11:00 pm \ 20 Comments \ Carolyn

We interrupt our normal blogging schedule to bring you an important public service health announcement…
Please read carefully. This information could save lives.

Recent clinical trials have shown that daily ingestion of one (1) lime macaron with lime curd filling is beneficial to health and quality of life; providing a plausible intervention in cases of starvation, sadness, scurvy and … er, starvation.
This is a clinically proven treatment, effective and simple to self-apply. It is palatable to children and adults alike.

Please note; do not take more than the recommended dose as this product may be addictive. Other possible side effects of overdosing on this product include making yourself sick and loss of appetite.

Lime macarons with lime curd filling

100g egg whites, allowed to sit covered at room temperature for 3 days
30g castor sugar
5g powdered egg white (if you can’t get it, Pavlova Magic works)
125g almond meal
200g pure icing sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tblsp finely grated lime rind

Sift the icing sugar, baking powder and almond meal. It takes a long time to sift the almond meal and you have to push it through with a spoon but it should mostly pass through the sieve eventually. Discard the small quantity of lumpy bits that do not pass through the sieve. Combine castor sugar and powdered egg white (or Pavlova Magic) in a separate little bowl.

Whisk the egg whites until firm and stiff enough to keep its shape when you turn the bowl upside down, I prefer to whisk by hand. Gradually add the castor sugar/powdered egg white mix whisking continuously and vigorously after each addition.

Add the icing sugar/baking powder/almond meal mix in five batches, stirring until mixed each time. Lastly, stir in the lime rind.
Transfer mixture to a piping bag and pipe rounds onto a baking sheet or baking paper, leaving an inch between each round, and let them sit on the bench for one hour or until they have developed a “skin” and do not feel sticky to the touch.
Bake at 120C for 6 minutes, turn the tray around, bake for another 6 minutes then remove from the oven. Slide the baking sheet off the tray and onto the bench; partly so you can cook the next batch, but also the cold bench stops the cooking process in its tracks. When they are completely cold, peel them carefully off the paper.

for the filling: (this recipe has appeared here before)

rind and juice of 5 limes
6 eggs
1 1/2 c sugar
125g butter

Lightly whisk the eggs and sugar together in a saucepan, then add the other ingredients. Whisk continually over a medium heat until the mixture has thickened to a custard-like texture then allow to cool in the pan. Decant into sterilised jars and refrigerate until set completely.

Spread a little onto a macaron like spreading jam thickly on bread, then stick another macaron on top.

Disclaimer… this actually isn’t a public health announcement at all, and it’s extremely unlikely to save any lives.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: macarons, recipe

Lemon macarons

04/11/2012 6:30 am \ 19 Comments \ Carolyn

It was inevitable….

The lemon glut continues.

Coupla lemon cakes a week. Every chicken dish is lemon chicken. Lemon juice squirted on the barbecued fish, whether the kids like it or not. All who visit invariably comment on our lovely lemon tree, and are quickly put on the spot.

Me: “Would you like some lemons??” (innocently, but with crazy grin)

Hapless visitor: “Oh, er, yes ple….”

and I’m off, grabbing a bag, stuffing a dozen lemons in it.

“Here you go!” thrusting it into their only politely enthusiastic arms. Visitor makes a mental note not to come around again until they’ve used up the lemons from the last time….

and now:

Lemon macarons with lemon curd filling

Add the icing sugar/baking powder/almond meal mix in five batches, stirring until mixed each time. Lastly, stir in the lemon rind.
Transfer mixture to a piping bag and pipe rounds onto a baking sheet or baking paper, leaving an inch between each round, and let them sit on the bench for one hour or until they have developed a “skin” and do not feel sticky to the touch.
Bake at 120C for 6 minutes, turn the tray around, bake for another 6 minutes then remove from the oven. Slide the baking sheet off the tray and onto the bench; partly so you can cook the next batch, but also the cold bench stops the cooking process in its tracks. When they are completely cold, peel them carefully off the paper.

for the filling: (this recipe has appeared here before)

rind and juice of 4 lemons
6 eggs
1 1/2 c sugar
125g butter

Spread a little onto a macaron like spreading jam thickly on bread, then stick another macaron on top.

Thoughts:
This time I weighed the egg whites… it’s occurred to me that this minor detail might actually be integral to the success of the recipe! I guess I lucked out in this respect before, since 3 egg whites of the type I usually buy turned out to be pretty close to 100g!

In all honesty I didn’t enjoy these quite as much as my previous efforts; the vanilla, coconut and berry fruit flavours. Maybe the natural sourness of citrus isn’t the most crash-hot pairing with the delicate almond flavour of macarons. Maybe we are just getting a bit lemon-ed out.

Maybe this is my swan-song in the macaron department. Once I’ve sorta conquered something tricky in cooking I tend to lose interest.
Woa.
Did I actually use the word “conquer” with regard to my cooking prowess? HA!! Oh I totally crack myself up sometimes. Imagining generations of French pastry chefs spinning in their graves right now…

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: macarons, recipe

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