Bacon and non-caramelised onion quiche!

The recipe is based on something out of the book "Bake: Essential Companion", a present from The Hubby, and a subtle reminder that women should stay in the kitchen, where they belong (thanks, babe!). No, I actually love recipe book gifts- please don't stop giving them to me...

The original recipe was (obviously) caramelised onion quiche, but no matter how hard I try, I can never get the dayum onions to caramelise. Perhaps they were caramelised and I just didn't know it. Perhaps they've been trying to tell me they've been caramelised for a long time and I just wasn't able to see it in them. Don't judge onions.

But I don't THINK they were caramelised.

So... The recipe!

Ingredients
Frozen short-crust pastry (enough to cover your quiche pan- I used a spring-form cake tin)
3 tbsp. olive oil
60g butter
600g onions, grated (you'll want to wear sunnies while you do this)
salt
pepper
150g bacon
150g mature cheddar cheese (or extra tasty)
250ml milk
250m pouring cream
4 eggs

Instructions

1. Line your baking pan/cake tin with short-crust pastry. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

2. Heat olive oil and butter in large saucepan and add the onions, salt and pepper. Cover and cook over a medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring regularly. Remove the lid and continue to cook for 20-30 minutes. This is the stage when the onions are supposed to become caramelised and become sweet and brown in colour. This has never happened to my onions yet, so I cook them for the time the recipe says, a bit longer even, until I get frustrated, and decided that cooked, non-caramelised onions are probably just as good. After you have gone through the same process, take the onions off the heat and set aside to cool!

3. Preheat your oven to 160C.

4. Spread the cooled onions over your chilled pastry base. Add bacon, and sprinkle the grated cheese on top of this.

5. In a bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, cream and 1tsp salt with pepper to taste. Pour this mixture over the bacon, onions and cheese.

6. Bake the quiche until golden brown, and filling is set (approximately 45 minutes).

This is one life decision you will not regret!

A day of many disasters... delicious, delicious, disasters...

Today me and Jason spent some time together doing one of my favourite things- cooking.

Jason's project was an amazing, rich lasagne (the best I have ever eaten), while mine was "Eskimo Bars".

For those of you not yet acquainted with eskimo bars, I saw them on this super duper food blog- 
 Mel's Kitchen Café.



Here's the original recipe on the original blog. Please check these out, they look so good, and so much better than my photos...

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2013/04/outrageous-eskimo-bars.html

Mel's beautiful version. So perfect.

So, Mel had an actual recipe and stuff like that... Real adult-type stuff... But that's just not me.

So I read through her recipe carefully, and then did not follow it at all.

Here's my version!

Not so pretty... But perhaps equally delicious (we can only hope).

Ingredients:
*Ice Magic
*The cheapest vanilla icecream in the store. After you buy it, don't put it in the freezer. This means it will be nice and spreadable when you use it.
*The cheapest brownie mix in the store with accompanying ingredients. I went with Duncan Hines because not only were they on special, they also have the option for chewy brownies versus cakey brownies (who doesn't prefer chewy. Honestly...)
*Caramel sauce (optional)

Directions:

1. Make the brownie! Have your husband break at least 2 eggs in the process (mine broke eight. EIGHT!!!)  It adds to the bonding time. Special moments are important.

2. Bake the brownie until almost fully cooked. It's always best a bit undercooked in my opinion, so the centre squares are more fudgey. Cool the brownies in the freezer for at least half an hour.

3. Take your cheap ice-cream, which by now should be nice and soft. Mine was not, unfortunately. When I tried to pour the ice-cream onto the brownie, a huge square of not-yet-fully melted ice-cream plonked onto the brownie. It did not spread well. It made a mess everywhere, including the floor, the bench, and my upper torso. The lesson we learnt is to be patient! Wait until the ice-cream is almost fully liquid and then pour it onto the brownie layer. Put the brownie ice-cream slice into the freezer again and allow to fully set.

4. Once it is set, this is the most tricky part. Pry the brownie ice-cream slice out of the tin, and cut it into slices, being careful to not disfigure the ice-cream with your freakishly warm hands (I was not successful in this).

5. Once you have cute little slices, or ugly chunks, dip the slices into a bowl of ice magic to fully coat. If this doesn't work, and your ice-cream feels like it wants to come off of your brownie layer every time you hold it upright, you can pour the ice magic over your bars.

6. Drizzle some warm caramel sauce over your eskimo bars, and eat with a fork (because there's just no easy way to eat this with your hands like in Mel's kitchen. Even with a fork, I ended up with sauce and ice magic everywhere).

 

Despite all of the misgivings I had with this recipe (not faults with the recipe itself, but rather the carrying out of the recipe by me) it was super delicious.

The brownie was thick, moist, and oh-so-fudgey, the ice-cream did not re-freeze icey, but maintained its creaminess, and the portion size was perfect. Definitely the best ice-cream cake bar thing (?) I have ever had. Well worth making.



FIN

Timtam cheesecake :)

Ok, so maybe I forgot about this blog... maybe I'm just lazy... Who knows? Who knows anything these days?! I certainly don't.

But what I DO know, without a doubt in my mind, is the absolute deliciousness of Timtams.

That's right, Timtams. The best biscuit made by man. Disagree? Let me know, we'll fight it out.

Combining my love of Timtams and my hubby's love of cheesecake, I whipped up this amazing, creamy, to-die-for Timtam cheesecake adapted from a recipe in a Taste magazine.

It's un-baked of course, because all the best cheesecakes are. And as if we need one more step between making the cheesecake and eating the cheesecake... Really.

THE RECIPE (kind of)

Ingredients:
1 packet of Timtams (I used double coated, because they're the best, but hey, each to their own)
300 g buttersnap biscuits
80g butter
1/4 cup boiling water
3 tsp gelatine
373g cream cheese
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup thickened cream
180 g white chocolate, melted in the microwave and left to cool


Instructions:

1. Blend your biscuits in a food processor. I don't own one, so I banged them with a meat mallet until they were satisfactorily crushed (read: until I became very bored of crushing biscuits and simply decided they were small enough pieces).

2. Pour delicious melted butter into the biscuits (preferably in a bowl) and mix together. Use this to press into the base of your cake tin or tray if you prefer. You should end up with a nice flat base (unless you give up crushing your bikkies like me. Then you will end up with a lumpy, uneven base. But you know what, sometimes life is lumpy and uneven!). Refrigerate your base, regardless of its looks.

3. While your base is chilling (like a villain), place your boiling water in a little bowl, and sprinkle over your gelatine, whisking gently with a fork until the gelatine has dissolved. If some of it clumps together, don't worry, you probably don't need all that gelatine anyway. Try and get the lumps out, but if that doesn't work, simply scoop the (hopefully) small lumps down the drain. That's what I did and my cheesecake still worked fine. Nigella Lawson I am not. Set your little water gelatine bowl aside to cool. Do not dip fingers in to see if it is cool. It most likely is not.

4. Beat your cream cheese, sugar and vanilla together in a large bowl, until light and fluffy. Add the cream and combine. Slowly add in cooled gelatine and white chocolate. Fold in chopped up Timtams, leaving a bit aside for garnish.

5. Scoop your yummy cheesecake batter into your cooled biscuit base, and chill over night. Don't forget to eat a little of the batter to test for poisoning. Top the cheesecake with extra chopped Timtams.

Not-Quite-A-Rainbow Cake

Today I decided I would do a lot of planning for the next school term. So I set my alarm for 8:30, got up at 8:35 and starting preparing planning documents, term overviews etc. I finished printed out my year 7 documents and a few receipts from ebay (educational necessities, of course) when my ink ran out.

 

As far as I'm concerned, there was no point in continuing my work until I had purchased ink (Jason and I are going late night shopping later). This means the rest of my day was suddenly free. So I decided to try my hand at a rainbow layer cake (naturally).

To do this, I just used a packet mix (moist lemon cake from woolies) that I had in my cupboard. Once I made it up though, I realised I definitely wouldn't have enough for a rainbow. A traffic light at best! I decided on the primary colours red yellow and blue (didn't really want a traffic light cake).

I separated the cake mix into 3 plates and mixed in some of my fancy new gel food dye to each.

 

I wanted to make this a mini layer cake, but I didn't have a small cake tin, so I simply used a smaller pot and put that in the oven...

 

Fancy

When all the layers were finished, I started layering them on to of each other with a basic icing in between. I then took some easy-peasy pre-made white icing (gosh I'm lazy today) and rolled it out flat so I could cover the entire cake with it. This turned out to not be as easy-peasy as I thought it would be... When ever I rolled it out on my icing-sugared table, it would always be stuck to the table when I tried to peel it off! Even though my table was dusted with icing sugar like it said! Grrrrr...

I eventually just laid down some alfoil, rolled it out flat and then turned it upside down over my cake, slowly peeling the alfoil off.

Just to make it more beautiful, I kneaded some pink and yellow food gel into some leftover icing and made stars.

 

Finished!

The Easter Bunny came and left me nauseated...

Well, Easter was certainly a treat this year. Too much of a treat, in fact.

 After the hopeful promise to myself that I would only eat chocolate for one day was broken, I was left feeling nauseated, bloated, and still with a huge bounty of easter eggs, bunnies and a giant box of Favourites sitting on my table.

While at first these beautifully wrapped chocolates were seen as bundles of joy, they soon became viewed as the enemy. Small bundles of weight-gain sitting there, looking at me...

Teasing me...

 Each egg was twirling its pencil moustache and whispering to me in a seductive French accent "You know you want me...".

No joke... They do that....

So I came up with the wonderful idea of chopping all of the eggs and chocolates up into tiny pieces (let me see you twirl your moustache now!) and putting them into cookies that Jason could take to work for morning tea.

Genius.

So I baked up some delicious cookies. I tried some different combos. There were caramel eggs which made chewy toffee-like biscuits, plain chocolate eggs which of course made delicious chocolate chip cookies, but the most interesting cookies were made by the box of Favourites...

There were the Turkish Delight cookies, which Jason said were amazing, the Cherry Ripe cookie (good, but not as good as the Turkish apparently), Crunchie cookies (neither of us tried these, but they looked quite good if you like honeycomb (I do not) Flake cookies, and Snickers cookies.

I made these all while Jason was at work and surprised him when he got home. To top it off, I decorated 2 cupcakes I had previously made and froze to suit the Easter-themed spread on my table. These cupcakes were definitely far better looking than the cookies. I was so proud of their cuteness that  I took a multitude of photos. Forgive me.






 Pink sugar has to be one of the cutest things ever. I love everything about it. Its semi-sparkly appearance, its crunchy texture on top of smooth, creamy icing.

On top of these little vanilla cupcakes rests a few candy-coated chocolate easter eggs (more of our easter bounty!).
Jason adored the look of them, but when I awoke today I saw he had left his on the counter! Waiting, forlornly, by itself. How can a cupcake this cute be forgotten! :(

 The recipe for EASTER MADNESS COOKIES

Ingredients:
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 Cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups plain flour
Any left over chocolate/candy (chopped up)

1. Beat butter and sugar together until creamy.
2. Add in the egg and vanilla.
3. Add in baking soda and and salt.
4. Mix in flour with wooden spoon.
5. Mix in pieces of chopped up easter eggs/ chocolate. You can use as much or as little as you like. I personally like to use A LOT (this worked well, as I had a lot).
6. Scoop out portions with your hands and roll onto rough balls about 1 1/2-2 inches in diameter. Place onto a greased baking tray and flatten slightly.
7. Bake in a preheated 180 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes. They should still be slightly soft in the middle.
8. Wait until they cool to remove from try. If you have used caramel eggs, be VERY careful when you remove them, as the caramel has a tendency to stick to the pan/alfoil and break apart the cookies.

Banoffee Pie

Luscious caramel....

Smooth whipped cream...

Sweet bananas...

Dreamy chocolate...

Is there a quicker way to heaven than this?

I think not...

This was the first time I had made caramel, and I was really worried, but surprisingly, it came out scrumptious, despite me thinking I had burnt it.

This is the pie before I put the cream on. Cute.

Ingredients

Pastry- 1 1/4 cups plain flour

             1/2 cup (115 g) butter

             1/4 cup superfine castor sugar

Filling- 115g butter

             400 g can skim sweetened condensed milk

              2/3 cup light brown sugar

               2 tbsp golden syrup

              2 bananas

               lemon juice

                Whipped cream and grated chocolate to serve

1. Preheat the oven to 160 C.

2. Put the flour in a bowl and rub in the butter.

3. Stir in castor sugar and form a dough.

4. Press into the pan (1 large, or a few small flan dishes).

5. Chill for 15 minutes

6. Blind bake for 15 mins, remove beans and then bake for another 15.

7. Put butter, condensed milk, sugar, and syrup into pan and heat gently. Bring to the boil and stir until mixture thickens.

  DO NOT STOP STIRRING UNTIL IT HAS THICKENED!

Sorry to scare you, but if you stop stirring at all, it could stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.

8. Pour oozing caramel into the cooled pastry shells. Cover in banana, cream, and grated chocolate.

 

SCOFF

Nutella Cookie Cups!!

Nutella...
Possibly one of the best spreads ever.

I say one of the best, because there's just no way of choosing the best spread. It really depends on what the spread is being spread on. And I love so many of them.

For crumpets, it's a tie between cheese spread and vegemite (both with lots of butter, of course!).

For scones, the obvious winner is jam and cream.

For sandwiches, I love Peanut butter and jam or polony and cream cheese (don't knock it till you try it, it's delicious!).

And for toast, Nutella and vegemite are the best.

When I was young, my mum didn't buy nutella very often, as it's full of sugar. So when she did, we would slather it on our toast every morning until, shortly, it was gone. This love of Nutella continued into adolescence, when my first boyfriend and I would gorge ourselves every Sunday on Nutella toast. And I do mean gorge. Piece after piece. We must've eaten almost a whole loaf every Sunday while we went through our Nutella phase.

Enough reminiscing about the delicious hazelnutty goodness...

Here's the recipe.


The trick to making these cookie cups is to not hyperventilate when thinking about the end result: Gooey little bundles of nutella imprisoned in adorable peanut butter cookie cells.


Ingredients-
1 1/2 Cups plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup Nutella

1. In a small bowl, sift flour, salt, baking soda.
2. In a seperate large bowl, cream togther the sugar and butter.
3. Add egg and vanilla and beat until mixed.
4. Add peanut butter, beat well.
5. Add the flour mixture.
6. Form 1 1/2 inch balls from the dough and place each ball into a cup of a mini-muffin pan.
7. Bake until just cooked.
8. While hot, use the back of a spoon to indent a deep well into the still-soft cookies.
9. Fill each well with nutella!

I got this recipe from a blog called barbarabakes.com/2011/02/peanut-butter-nutella-cookie-cups/CachedThe recipe is a little different, but if you want to see the real thing, hers look amazing, just like everything on her blog.