January 22, 2009

Chocolate Baby Cupcakes



This is the best chocolate home made cake recipe that I have come across. I absolutely love this recipe because it's so easy and I usually have the ingredients on hand to make it on short notice. The result is a cake that is moist and looks and tastes like those packet betty crocker mixes. You can also use the same recipe to make these cute little cupcakes.

What's even easier is that I use Nutella for my icing/topping. It tastes great and doesn't require any mixing! You could leave the icing out if you prefer and just dust the cakes with a little with icing sugar when serving.

Ingredients
  • 1 1/3 cups plain flour (you can use self raising flour, just cut out the bicarb soda)
  • 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 1/3 cup cocoa powder
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 125g butter, melted, cooled
  • 1 teaspoon vanillin sugar
Topping
  • Nutella/Chocalate Ganache or the usual chocolate butter icing.
  • Sprinkles

Method
  • Preheat oven and grease muffin tins. I usually use those mini patty cases and just spray some canola oil in them.
  • Sift flour, bicarb soda and cocoa into a bowl. Add in the sugar and vanillin sugar.
  • In a seperate bowl or jug, combine the milk/buttermilk, eggs and melted butter.
  • Make a well in the centre of the flour mix and pour in your wet mix.
  • Use an electric mixer, first beat on low until the mixture is combined. Then increase the speed and beat the mixture until it looks creamy (a bit like mousse).
  • Pour mixture into cake pan or into muffin tins and bake at 170 degrees for about 35 minutes if your baking a cake and about 15 minutes if your making the mini muffins.
  • In either case I usually test to see if they are done by interting a knife to see if it comes out clean.
  • Cool the cakes on a wire rack then ice with your preffered topping.

January 13, 2009

Pohca/ Poğaça (Cheese and Parsley Pastries)



Ingredients
  • 1/2 cup yoghurt
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup oil
  • salt to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
  • 3 cups self raising flour (may require more)
  • 1 egg + 1 egg white (keep the yolk)
For the filling:
  • half a bunch of parsley (optional)
  • feta cheese, shredded

Method
  1. Mix yoghurt, milk, oil, egg white, salt and flour to form a soft dough. You may need to add more flour as you kneed the dough.
  2. Break small pieces of the dough to form little balls.
  3. Flatten the balls between your palms to form a small circle and lay flat on table, fill it with parsley and shredded cheese and roll back into a ball shape. (I made mine into crescent shapes. To make them like the picture, just place the filling mixture on one half of the circle and fold the other half over, press down the edges).
  4. Place pohca's on a greased oven tray making sure there is room between them.
  5. Brush the top of the pohca's with egg yolk and sprinkle some sesame seeds and nigella seeds.
  6. Cook at about 160 degrees until brown on top.
Thanks for looking. Please check out my other Turkish recipes and not so Turkish ones also! I will be posting a new Pohca/Poğaça recipe very soon. It's probably the softest Poğaça I have ever made.

TURKCE

Malzemeler

  • 1/2 bardak yogurt
  • 1/2 bardak sut
  • 1/2 bardak sivi yag
  • tuz (1 tatli kasigi gibi)
  • 3 bardak mayali un (belki fazla alabilir)
  • 1 yumurta + 1 yumarta beyazi (sarisi ustune surmek icin)

Ic Malzeme:
  • maydanoz
  • beyaz peynir


Yapilisi:

  1. Yogurt, sut, yag,yumurtalari, tuz ve unu yogur. Gerekirse daha fazla un ekle ve kulak memesi gibi yumusak bir hamur olsun.
  2. Hamurdan ufak toplar yapin.
  3. Ellerin arasinda bastirarak yuvarlak seklendirin. Masanin ustune koyun ve arasina ic malzemeden ekleyip ikiye katlayin.
  4. Yaglanmis tepsiye aralikli dizin.
  5. Ustlerine yumurta sarisi surun, susam ve corekotu serpin.
  6. 160 derece firinda ustleri kizarincaya dek pisirin.
Yakinda yeni bir Poğaça tarifi ekliyecem. Cok acayip yumusak Poğaça ve kolay bir tarif.


January 7, 2009

Snowflake Coconut Balls





Ingredients
  • 3 cups dessicated coconut
  • 1 cup milk powder
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 200ml thickened cream

Method

  • Mix all the ingredients together to form a soft dough.
  • Make little balls and dip into some coconut
  • Refrigerate until it is firm (a few hours).

Pink Birthday Cake for Princess





I baked a simple butter cake (marble) for my princess. Decorated it with some pink "Krem Santi" - you can pick it up from the local turkish grocer. It is the equivalent of pink whipped cream. I am sure you can achevie the same outcome by whipping up some cream and adding food colouring to it. Never tried it but I am sure it's possible.

I was very proud of the decoration though. It was a joint effort between, myself, hubby and aunty Nin and some very new icing piping equipment we picked up recently. Oh I made the little candy princess by the way - Not! I bought them from woolies. Certianly adds a semi professional touch to the cake.

Butter cake recipe is listed below, it was taken from the huggies website:

Ingredients:

These quantities make one standard cake.

  • 125grams of softened butter
  • 2/3 cup of caster sugar
  • 2 eggs (lightly beaten)
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Essence
  • 2 cups SR Flour
  • 2/3 cup milk

Method:

  • Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy
  • Add eggs and Vanilla Essence (Beat until well mixed)
  • Add small amounts of flour and milk until well mixed in together.
  • Place into a lined and greased tin and cook for 45mins in an oven pre-heated to 180C.
  • Test with a skewer to ensure that it is cooked.

Variations:

  • Chocolate cake
    To turn this recipe into a chocolate cake add 2tbs of cocoa and 2tbs of milk to the mixture and beat through.
  • Marble Cake
    Separate mixture into 3 equal parts in different bowls.
    Add a couple of drops of pink food colouring to one part.
    Add 1tbs of cocoa and 1tbs of milk to one part.
    Now spoon the different mixtures into the tin, one spoonful at a time, so that the colours alternate. To finish off the effect use a knife or skewer and swirl the colours together.

Honey & Soy Chicken Stir Fry






I don't normally measure ingredients, so according to how much you would like to make or whatever ingredients you have on hand, just throw in what you think would be enough. A rough estimate is listed below.

Ingredients

  • Chicken Breast, 400g
  • Brocolli, small bunch
  • Corn Spears, 1 can
  • Red Capsicum, half
  • Mushrooms, 300g
  • Onions, 1 diced
  • Oyster Sacue 1 to 2 tablespoons
  • Soy Sauce, 1 to 2 tablespoons
  • Honey, 1 to 2 tablespoons
  • salt

Method

  • Dice onion, fry in oil. Add in the chicken and fry until brown. Set aside in a seperate bowl.
  • Add some more oil to wok if necessary, start with the "hard" vegetables so fry brocolli until it wilts a little.
  • Then carrots, corn spears,capsicum, mushroom.
  • Add the chicken back in once the veggies are cooked to your liking.
  • Finally, drizzle in your sauces. Give it a good mix and serve with some rice.
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