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.

ROLO COOKIES!

GOOEY ROLO COOKIES!

I had a yearning for baking this morning. I had been scouring some delicious food blogs when I came across these... Rolo cookies!
 

The hubby was quite pleased with the look of them in the article, so I sent him out for the ingredients. :)
 

They turned out quite delish and were surprisingly easy to make. I drizzled some white glaze icing over the top afterwards to make stripes.

There were heaps left over so I got to take them into my office at school the next day. When I left at 3, every single one was gone, so I guess that's a good sign.

THE RECIPE

2 and a half cups of plain flour

3/4 cup unsweetend cocoa

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup sugar

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 cup butter

1 block Nestle Rolo chocolate

DIRECTIONS

1.  Heat oven to 180C

2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, and baking soda. Mix it up well.

3. In a seperate large bowl mix the sugar, brown sugar, and butter. Beat, and then add in the vanilla and eggs. It'll beat into a nice gooey light brown mixture. Yummm...

But wait! Don't eat it yet! There's more~

4. With floured hands, shape about one tbsp of the mixture into a flat disc. Press on top one square of rolo chocolate. Then cover this with another dollop of the mixture so the chocolate is in the centre. Get rid of any seams with your hands, and place on a greased baking tray.
5. This made about 24 for me.
6. Bake for aprox 15 minutes, until firm, but not crisp.
7. Take out to cool.

These are best a little underdone so they're nice and fudgy.
The caramel may stick to the tray a little, so be careful when removing the cookies. :)

Real Adulthood...

My name is Sharon Carleo, aged 21, and I have recently entered the world of "Real Adults". I have finished university, gotten married, and acquired a "Real Job" ( a career-type job meant to sustain me for life, rather than simply pay my rent while I'm at uni). The items on my To-Do List for life are gradually being ticked off.

Although I have moved into "Real Adult"-hood, I still do not feel like a "Real Adult". Maybe all Real Adults feel this way. Or perhaps I am not truly a Real Adult.

There are things that Real Adults do that I do not do, cannot ever see myself doing...

Real Adults wash dishes every day. I do not. Sometimes not even every other day! I do not wash dishes as they are made dirty. I enjoy baking and cooking, but I do not clean as I go. Rather, I make a huge mess, and then, after the baking/cooking is done, I am exhausted from all the effort, and convince myself that I will do the dishes later... I then avoid cooking for a while, as if I want to cook, I will first have to clean, at least until the point where I have usable dishes.

Real Adults cook or prepare dinner every night. I do not. Some days I cook dinner, other days I'll simply eat Corn Thins and cheese, or even spread some cream cheese on a few slices of ham. Real Adults do not do this. They make salads and some kind of main meal.

Real Adults cash cheques. I do not. I'm not sure what it is about this that I can never seem to do. It just never happens. I have never cashed any of my cheques. Ever. When I get a cheque I put it in my wallet, meaning to cash it as soon as I get the chance... Then it lingers in my wallet, sneakily hiding, only showing itself at inconvenient moments such as when I am at work, or on a Sunday. I have even been to the bank, and completely forgotten to cash my stupid cheques. I am aware that they expire. I have reminded myself to cash them. And yet... Here I am. Multiple cheques still uncashed...

Too busy thinking about cake to deal with cheques...

Those are just a few things which make me dispute my Real Adult-hood. When I got married, it became apparent that I was quickly approaching real Adult-hood, and my Real Adult skills seemed to be lacking. This brings me to the purpose of this blog. While I could devote a bit of my time to enhancing my cheque-cashing or washing skills, I found cooking to be a whole lot more enjoyable, and so I decided that with the beginning of my new little family, I would build up my skills repertoire. My future children will be able to say that their favourite childhood memory was helping Grannie Carleo cook her famous (insert dish here). So in this blog I will be trying new recipes, seeking advice, and hopefully, providing my future grandkiddies with the Martha Stewart-esque Grannie they deserve... Minus the cleaning skills. :)

A very sophisticated picture of me that I'd like to think people see me as. In reality however, for most people the last picture is far more realistic...