drinking chocolate - best brand?

Both of these brands of instant drinking chocolate are on special at Coles at the moment, though the ‘La Bella’ brand (~$4) is about $1 or so more expensive than the Cadbury brand (~$3). Earlier this week I bought the La Bella one, but today I saw the Cadbury was on special too so I thought I’d try that as well and compare them.

After trying both brands, the only conclusion I’ve come to is that both are in need of improvement. La Bella is better for its chocolatey-ness, but you have to use a fair bit and it doesn’t have much sweetness, so I ended up adding some sugar (which I find annoying because I don’t want to have to do any work - I just want to put it in the cup and have it taste good - not have to adjust the sweetness myself).

Cadbury’s is Ok - you use less, but it has a sweetness that, if not used wisely, could be sickly. And it’s not very chocolatey compared to La Bella.

My solution so far is to put a spoonful of each brand in a cup. Top with hotwater, stir, and add milk.

My longer term goal is to try the other brands of drinking chocolate and see which is better. I think Vittoria might be better, but at ~$8 a pop it’s pretty pricey. Granted, the container is about twice the size of the brands I’ve bought so far, but I’d hope it was good for that kind of price. Anyone tried it?

baking challenge #3: danish almond cookies in 20 minutes

I found this recipe today on recipezaar for Danish “Mandel Kager” Almond Cookies. It sounded good so I gave it a whirl. The challenge? Making cookies that weren’t burnt and tasted good.

In my baking endeavours so far, I’ve learned two important things. I’m sure I knew these before, but kind of ignored them.

1. Not all ovens run to the temperature that they say they do. Some run hotter, some run cooler. It’s important to get a feel for what your oven runs at. For instance, my oven runs like an incinerator. If you put it on 150C, it’s about the equivalent of 180C.
2. Buying a timer is very important. It means you’ll always bake things for the right amount of time, and be alerted loudly to when it’s ready. It also makes things less stressful, because you can do other things in the meantime without feeling you have to check things time and again.

I mixed all the ingredients in my Kenwood Chef, sprayed the tray with some light olive oil, rolled the mix into balls, and dotted about 7 on to the tray. I put the rest of the mixture into a bowl, covered it and put it in the fridge for another time.

Why? Well, I figure it will last a couple of days. I figure that if I make them all in one hit, I’m likely to eat too many. I also figure that if I keep the mix and make another batch later, I’ll extend the mix and be able to have fresh cookies again in a few days. Also, like most sweet recipes, it contains a tonne of butter, and I’m conscious that if I do end up eating a lot of them, I’ll be consuming that tonne of butter. So yeah, it’s to essentially to spread out my butter consumption so I feel mentally better about eating them. lol.

The mixing & prep time took under 10 minutes. I then baked them for about 12 minutes. They should be cooled for a while until the harden up, but overall these are very quick cookies to make.

Ingredients-wise I stuck to the recipe quite well. Instead of the cinnamon and cardamom though, I used some mixed spice. I also didn’t put in the shortening - I didn’t have any so omitted that completely and just put in a bit extra butter. I put it a touch of almond essence too - just a drop or two - to extend the almondy-ness.

Overall, they’re pretty good cookies! My first impression is that they are very light and fluffy cookies, but this may just because they need more time to rest. The almond flavour is delicious though, and the spice is a nice touch. Very simple and inexpensive little recipe to try out next time you have a cookie craving

baking challenge #2: vanilla muffin birthday cake

One of the ladies at work is having her birthday tomorrow and we’ll both be working the weekend, so I decided it would be nice to whip up some vanilla birthday-themed muffins tonight to serve at morning tea. This was a first, as I’ve never made a cake for a colleague before, and also never made icing that was any good before (let alone figure out how to use a piping bag without destroying it!!). It was also an important hurdle to jump in terms of cooking the muffins without burning them.

I used the same ingredients and method from the blueberry muffin recipe I made last week, but omitted the blueberries, and added about 2-3 times the amount of vanilla essence. I also added a couple of teaspoons of maple syrup to the mix. I topped them with two icings - one made from butter, icing sugar, vanilla essence, lemon juice and a few drops of chocolate essence, and the other from butter, icing sugar, vanilla essence, lemon juice, and the tiniest drop of almond essence. I iced half the muffins with the chocolate, half with the almond, sprinkled them with some 100s & 1000s, and then piped details on them with the opposing colour icing. The result? A beautifully fluffy, vanillery, and scrumptiously buttery muffin. I’ve arranged them all in a container, with a little extra icing piped on the centre muffin and a ‘Happy Birthday’ flag added for decoration. Lined up like this it looks a bit like a birthday cake in itself, but all portioned up neatly ahead of time! (Meaning no slicing and less dishes for us lazy people! )

To make the flag, cut a small piece of paper and fold it in half. Write the greeting on the front. Opened up and brush the inside lightly with PVA glue. Line up a toothpick in the crease, and close the paper over it. Press to seal. This dries quickly & can be used pretty much immediately.

All packaged up, it’s ready to go! Now I just hope I didn’t go too overboard with the vanilla essence…

baking challenge #1: the croissant, part 2

Well, they look a bit like croissants!!

Nah. They turned out pretty well considering.

Croissants are funny things. You launch into making them, thinking ‘oh my god, this is going to be SO hard’, but in fact it’s not what you think. It actually doesn’t take much energy to make them, moreso just time. The perfect time to make them would be when you’re home for the day, doing something like.. cleaning the house, and/or cooking a roast. Because after the initial process of mixing the ingredients together, it’s really just a repeated and very simple process of rolling, folding and refrigerating.

When I make them again - which will be soon, because I halved the ingredients in the recipe (to save on waste if I stuffed them up) and at any rate the ingredients cost barely anything - I will probably make a few changes to how I went about making them.

For one, I tended to use a bit too much flour on the bench when I was rolling them. I think this made the outside a bit dry and floury when they were cooked. Next time I think I’ll just use a tiny bit of flour, if any. The mixture wasn’t hugely sticky anyway - it was a bit of overkill on my part.

Secondly, they didn’t rise as much as I wanted them to. I think this is probably mostly because of the weather - it is pretty cold right now - and also I used dried yeast rather than fresh (which the recipe asked for). I think next time I’ll try activating my dry stuff first by putting it in some tepid water with some honey. I reckon this should do the trick.

Thirdly, I don’t think I’ll roll the pastry as thinly in the final step - the step before cutting it into triangles and folding into the croissant shape. I think if it had been a touch thicker they would have kept their shape better when I rolled them, and wouldn’t have been fatter and shorter, rather than long and skinny.

And lastly, I think I’ll slice my final rolled peice of pastry into many more triangles than I did. I cut it into 8. I reckon that I could have cut those peices in half again. If they rose properly, they would be the ideal size I think.

Anyway, with those points aside, I think they turned out pretty well for my first shot. The boy ’schwein reckons they’re the best he’s had - which is in some ways true - they do taste really good homemade, fresh from the oven and spread with butter and apricot jam - but they do need to be tweaked. Not the recipe, just my baking habits & knowledge. They were edible though, and not burnt, so that’s an achievement in itself I think, for now!

Here’s the recipe I used, and recommend. Once you read through it and get a grasp of the general method, you’ll see too that it’s actually quite straightforward.

As I think I said in my previous post, it’s taken from the book: “Patisserie” by Aaron Maree (1994).

CROISSANT

Ingredients

1 & 3/4 cups cold milk
1 egg
3 teaspoons sugar
30g fresh compressed yeast
6 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
500g unsalted butter
1 & 1/4 cups plain flour

Method

1. In a bowl, mix cold milk with egg, sugar and yeast and stir until well combined.
2. Add flour and salt to the liquid and mix until a dough is formed.
3. Knead the yeast dough for 5 minutes on a lightly floured surface and then allow to rest, covered, for 10 minutes.
4. Mix butter and extra flour together lightly and quickly until both are combined. Do not cream butter, simply mix lightly until a dough is formed. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.
5. Roll dough into a large square. Press the chilled butter mixture into the centre of the dough square. Pull each of the four corners up and over the butter mixture so that it is totally enclosed within the dough.
6. Refrigerate the dough for a further 30 minutes.
7. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to triple its original length, then mark and fold into thirds.
8. Rest dough in refrigerator for 20 minutes, then once again roll out to triple its original length and fold into thirds.
9. Rest dough another 20 minutes in the refrigerator, then form a further threefold and place back in refrigerator.
10. Roll dough out to 5mm (1/4 inch) in thickness and form a long oblong shape.
11. Cut straight down the centre of the dough and then cut each half into individual triangles.
12. Roll the crossaints, starting at the large end and rolling towards the pointed end, curving the croissants so that they are crescent-shaped.
13. Place on a baking sheet.
14. Place the sheets of croissants in a warm place for 30-40 minutes or until double in size.
15. Bake at 200C (400F) for 35-40 minutes, or until golden brown.
16. Allow croissants to cool slightly before serving.

Good luck and enjoy!

baking challenge #1: the croissant

Welcome to the first installment of my personal weekly baking challenge!

Why a baking challenge, you ask? Well, simply put, I currently suck at baking. I don’t often have the patience, tend to improvise too much, look for too many shortcuts, and generally just burn everything I put in the oven (my recent blueberry muffin attempt being one source of inspiration to change my ways! :P)

At 22 I think it’s time I put in some real effort and learned to bake properly. It’s affordable, yummy (if done right), and fun (if done right), not to mention a good way of spending a Sunday arvo. Plus if you’re good at it, you can potentially bribe people with your awesome baked stuff.

So here goes.

Right this minute I’m in the middle of my first ever attempt at making croissants.

I got the recipe from a book off our shelf - ‘Patisserie’ by Aaron Maree.

I was just about to say ‘looks simple enough’, but I don’t want to jinx my attempt.

I’m determined to find success in making these - a good one seems to cost way too much from our local bakery considering the very basic ingredients involved. And making them in bulk means freezing leftovers - always handy for sleepy weekend brekkies & brunches.

I’ll update this post later tonight with the outcome!

Wish me luck!

blueberry muffins for mum and me

I received a Mother’s Day -themed newsletter from recipezaar today, which featured a fantastic looking picture for “Melt in Your Mouth Blueberry Muffins”. I followed the link trail to find the recipe, and was stoked to see that it was really really simple. I generally suck at baking, and my oven burns pretty much everything that goes in it, so my baking mantra is ‘the simpler the better!’

I haven’t ever made blueberry muffins before, but I’ve eaten them now and again at cafe’s and the like. They are always a bit sticky and gooey for me, and as such a bit on the heavy side. For this reason I have to admit I’ve never found them that appetizing. They’re often also either too sweet or too bland. These are all reasons why I’ve probably never made them.

This recipe is amazing though. It goes to show that the best things in life are often the most simple. I am so impressed. I made this batch tonight to test them out, with the plan to make some more on Saturday to give to our Mums on Sunday. I’m glad I decided on doing that now, because it turns out that in an attempt to brown the tops a little bit more, I left the grill on too long and they got a bit tooo brown. I was sitting right in front of the damn oven, too, but our oven doesn’t have a glass window on the door, so it’s hard to monitor what you’re baking without letting the heat out.

Anyway, although I was sure they were burnt, they actually aren’t. They’re just well coloured!

The consistency is absolutely beautiful, you take a bite and its all melty and perfect, and the blueberries are sooo good. It doesn’ stick to your teeth like most blueberry muffins do; but its not too dry or bready either. It’s hard to explain - it’s just perfect. I will definitely make these again - and perhaps alternate what berries I put in now and then, for some variety.

So do try the recipe out - you won’t be disappointed! Great served with a cuppa

22 years of good food

After the turbulence of the weekend, my birthday didn’t really turn out as I had planned, but overall it proved to be one of the most memorable, albeit very laid back. The boy ’schwein woke at 5.15am for work, and before leaving made me a breakfast of the best homemade granola with a small jug of milk and a bowl of King Island Dairy yoghurt. I was so impressed - his granola is good! If he wants to make me that every day, I won’t complain!! Then he brought me a warm plate, fresh from the oven, with two croissants from the local bakery which he filled with honey ham, Swiss cheese, and Dijon mustard. Although I was initially a bit grumpy because I had to wake up at 6, everything tasted fantastic and I felt very spoilt.

The house was in dire need of a clean, so seeing I was up early I decided to tidy up, which eventually got extended to a full-blown dust, vacuum & mop. Then I gave the cat a bath, gave the bathroom a scrub, and then a shower for myself. Because I started so early it was all done by 10am!

We had initially planned to go out for lunch, so he came home from work early. But after the huge breakfast I wasn’t really hungry enough. So instead we stayed home. We bought some organic potatoes and 2 leeks from the supermarket the other day, and it was a chilly enough for something warm, so I decided on a dinner of potato and leek soup. It turned out really really well, and tasted pretty luxurious once topped with a slice of bread and cheese, and toasted under the grill.

Today we continued the birthday celebrations with an extravagant afternoon tea with his Mum (who also had a birthday recently) & her partner. We made homemade scones with strawberry jam and whipped cream, and bought a coffee & walnut cake, and another cake that was kind of like a giant Swiss pastry filled with custard and walnuts. With a few plungers of good coffee, a few cruisy records on in the background, and some great conversation, it turned out to be a nice and relaxing arvo for all.

Ah, the power of food to make things seem brighter.

Potato & Leek Soup

1. 1 medium saucepan - fill 2/3 with potatoes, roughly cubed; cover with water; boil until softened.
2. Tip out 1/2 the water, and replace with approx 1 litre milk.
3. In a separate pan, saute finely sliced leeks in some butter until translucent. When ready add to potatoes.
4. Add 2 stock cubes.
5. Use a potato masher to break up the potatoes.
6. Cook and mash until soup is thickened - by this time the potatoes have broken up enough to no longer be lumpy.
7. Add salt and white pepper to taste.
8. Ladel into bowls. Top with a peice of crusty bread, sprinkled with a generous amount of grated cheese and a crackling of pepper.
9. Toast under grill.
10. Serve and enjoy!

op-shopping, cleaning, chocolate-eating

As the title suggests, we spent today op-shopping and then cleaning. You realise after a good spring clean how much nicer your home is when it’s clean and tidy.

Ah, the joys of working weekends and having your ‘weekend’ mid-week.. There’s no excuse not to spend your time off doing all the cleaning and the grocery shopping because everythings open!

whittakers chocolate preoccupation

It started off with this, for under $2:

I was impressed. Big, chunky peanuts, not little broken up ones. Thick creamy chocolate, but dark enough to be flavoursome. Only problem being there’s 3, so sharing is tricky - chocolate never breaks in half equally for some reason…

Then I tried this, under $3 from Coles:

Fruit and nut chocolate is my favourite. Whittaker’s take on the classic combo definitely delivered. SO good. Then we tried cashew:

Just like the peanut slab, but in block-form and with big chunky cashews… Mmmm…

Then we saw this today on special:

And I have to say, for plain milk chocolate it’s pretty damn good. It almost has a coffee-like flavour. Again, very yummy.

I find it amazing that this stuff usually costs less than Cadbury’s chocolate, and yet the quality is really really good. Especially compared to Cadbury’s - that stuff is yuck. I like the retro packaging too

I just checked out the website and they have heaps more flavours, including 72% Dark, Almond Gold, Bittersweet Dark, Brazil Nut, Coconut, Dark Ginger, Dark Orange, Hazelnut, Kiwi Fruit, Macadamia, Peanut, Raisin, Rum & Raisin, White Chocolate, and White Macadamia. And that’s just their ‘block’ range.. they have toffee milks, slabs, santes, squares and kbars too.

As you can see, I have a lot more to get through!!

I reckon the Kiwi’s put magic in their food or something.. everything I’ve tasted from there reminds me of my childhood. Which in turn reminds me of Noshtalgia.

homemade almond biscotti

I’ve always wanted to make these but never really got around to it. I found a recipe for biscotti today on the Kenwood Chef website though that seemed simple and do-able, so I gave it a try using my trusty old 70s machine. Turned out pretty well I reckon! As usual, I altered the recipe somewhat to suit my pantry contents, and the method was also tweaked a bit because of my temperamental oven. I also doubled the recipe because I’m a) a greedy-guts, and b) too lazy to make more once I’ve devoured the first lot! I’m pretty happy with the outcome overall, tho if I had more almonds and some pistacios I would have added them. I also wish I could find a substitute for baking powder so that desserts like this don’t have that dry-mouth feeling when you eat them.. if anyone has any ideas let me know! Here’s the recipe…