Bake.Nuts.

I’ve got a little Blue-tac on the wall next to my planner. It comes in use when I come across recipes in my daily forage online and I think they’ll be fun to try. Right now, I’ve got 2 banana muffin recipes on it. I tried one today. Yum yum. I halved the recipe because my housemates would just kill me if I made 24 of them. In any case, I’m planning to use the other recipe next weekend. Then I can see which one is better. This one is spongy, not terribly sweet and very yummy. I added toasted walnuts.

I also baked oatmeal rasin cookies a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, they have all been eaten by a particular hungry boy that descended on the house yesterday. Next time~

Thanks Chubby Hubby! These were great!

Banana Muffins

Makes 20 to 24

21⁄4cups (295g) flour
2tsp baking powder
2tsp bicarbonate of soda
1⁄2tsp salt
1cup (210g) sugar
240g unsalted butter
4 eggs, beaten
4 bananas (roughly 375g), mashed
5Tbs milk
1tsp pure vanilla essenceSift flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a medium bowl. Cream butter and sugar until creamy white. Add beaten eggs a little at a time. Beat well after each addition. Add vanilla, milk and mashed bananas. Fold in flour and blend well. Pour mixture into muffin cups and bake at 180˚C for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

http://chubbyhubby.net/blog/banana-cake-post-by-s-guest-blogger/

I had a dinner date and a craving to bake cheesecake. So here it is!

I must say, I’m surprised at how well these turned out. I made them at 11.30pm, having had to borrow a loose-bottom pan from a friend and cheesecakes being required to enjoy at least a night in the fridge for fair texture. The cream cheese wasn’t at room temperature and the batter had some lumps. With all said and done, this recipe’s definitely a keeper. It’s lighter and smoother than the other recipe I tried from joyofbaking. Thanks Allrecipes!

Chantal’s New York Cheesecake

Batter

896g cream cheese (room temperature)

300g sugar

180ml milk

4 eggs

230g sour cream

30g flour

1tbspn vanilla extract

Base

200g biscuit crumbs (I used digestives)

115g butter, melted

50g sugar

Grated peel of an orange

Preheat oven to 175degrees C. Mix base ingrediants, press into bottom of pan

In a large bowl, mix cream cheese with sugar until smooth. Blend in milk, then eggs one at a time, mixing just enough to incorporate. Mix in sour cream, vanilla and flour until smooth. Pour filling into prepared pan.

Bake in over for 1 hour. Switch oven off, let cake cool in over with door closed for 5-6 hours. Wet a sharp knife with hot water and dry. Slide the knife around the edges of the cake to avoid cracking as the cake cools. Chill in fridge overnight.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chantals-New-York-Cheesecake/Detail.aspx

Sugarcookies

These ones tasted a bit strange, hence the chocolate glaze to try and mitigate the excessive baking powder taste. I won’t be making these again. They were the result of too much about-to-expire-shortening in the fridge.

Remember the Victorian sponge in my first post and the apple version? I attempted it today for a little get-together. Yummy. It’s way way better than the previous version of an apple cake that I tried. Much less oil. Wait, NO oil. And the apple juice leaks out from the apples to give the whole cake this really good apple taste. Yum.
My only regret is forgetting to take a photo with the apples falling out.

Apple Cake

What on earth is a Parkin? I had no clue either. My second morning at the Age Concern cafe and she kindly tells me to pick something from the recipe book. I’ve never heard of this one and she hasn’t baked one before so we decided to give it a go. It turned out quite well – the recipe book must be quite reliable. The sweet smell of the baking Parkin brought people running into the kitchen. Haha!

This is what Wiki says:

Parkin is a moist and sticky ginger cake made in Northern England, primarily in Yorkshire. It is traditionally eaten on Bonfire Night, but is also enjoyed year-round. The principal ingredients of parkin are flour, oatmeal, black treacle (Molasses), fat (traditionally lard, but modern recipes use butter or margarine), and ginger. The name is sometimes given as perkin.

Oooo.. Bonfire night is coming! I hear the firecrackers going off at night set by pesky kids.

I don’t think it’s going to be the kind of thing that I would like to eat though. Oatmeal and treacle? Hmmmmm. Here it is anyway.

Parkin

Recipe

I baked a remarkably well set of brownies today for the Freshers’ Welcome. This is a tried and tested (several times) recipe and almost always works out well. I seem to always bake for more than the required time though – up to 45 mins. This gives me hard, crunchy sides and a moist centre. I’ll have to experiment more for the perfect texture.

Quick and Fudgey Brownies

4 oz. Unsweetened Baking Choc, broken

3/4 cup butter

2 cups sugar (I find this a tad too much, unless you like very sweet stuff)

3 eggs

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup nuts (optional)

Heat oven to 180 degrees. Grease 13×9x2 inch baking pan. Place chocolate and butter in large microwave-sclae bowl. Microwave at HIGH for 1.5-2 mins or until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth when stirred (I tend to stop it at 15-30 sec intervals to stir it. Lesson learnt after several cases of burnt chocolate) Add sugar; stir with spoon until well blended. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Add flour and nuts, stir until well blended. Spread into prepared pan. Bake for 30 – 35min or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out almost clean. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack.

Makes about 24 brownies.

I woke up in the morning – grumpy, and generally wondering if this is really a good idea. Still, obligations are obligations and I trudged into town for my first baking session. After a necessary induction talk, I was ushered into the kitchen to attempt my first ever – Sugarless fruit cake. Well. It’s not really something I would like to eat, which explains why I’ve never made something like that before. But if it sells… *shrug* I would post the recipe, but I have promptly forgotten it. It did turn out well though.

Sugarless Fruit cake

Then A, a jolly, motherly lady got me started on a Victorian sponge cake – with extra coconut. Aha! Now that’s what I’d be interested in. Then I had to make another one 3.5 times bigger. Well.

Coconut sponge

Pity I didn’t get a chance to try them though. It would have been nice to see how they tasted. I do hope I didn’t poison anyone and they sell well. So there!

And so begins my foray as a volunteer baker in Newcastle.

Coconut sponge

Sponge cake

4 oz. Butter

4 oz. Caster Sugar

2 eggs

1 tspn vanilla extract

4 oz. Self rising flour

Beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy and pale in colour. Add vanilla. Add whole eggs one by one, adding a tbsp of flour with each one. Mix. Add remaining flour and mix with a metal spoon. Bake at about 180 degrees for 20-30mins until done.

Alterations

Coconut – add 2 oz. of dessicated coconut and 1 tbpn of milk

Apple – cut and core apples, place them at the bottom of the tray and pile the mixture on.