Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is my favourite Chocolate Chip recipe. It makes a delicious medium biscuit that is both crunchy and chewy if that’s possible. The recipe makes heaps. I haven’t counted them but a batch fills my big biscuit tin. They are a firm favourite with the kids.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

2 tbsp hot water

1 tsp vanilla essence

3 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1-2 cups chocolate chips

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Place butter and sugars into food processor or mixer and beat until pale and creamy. Add eggs, hot water and vanilla. Mix until fluffy.

Sift together flour, salt and baking soda. Stir into butter mixture and add chocolate chips. Drop teaspoonfuls onto a greased baking tray and bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden.

Plum Jam

Our neighbour gave us a big bag of plums the other day. They were quite ripe and we weren’t eating enough of them so I made some plum jam. This turned out so beautifully and was so easy. Love the dark red colour.

Picture to follow

2.7kg Plums

1 1/4 cups water

2kg Sugar

Roughly chop plums. Add water and cook slowly in a large pot until fruit is pulpy. Add sugar and stir until dissolved then bring to the boil and boil rapidly for about 15 minutes. Stones will rise to the surface and you can pick them out while cooking with a slotted spoon. Test for setting by dropping a small amount of jam on a cold plate. Draw your finger through the jam and if a channel is formed and stays, then the jam will set.  Pour into jars. Yum.

Lemon Honey

Another home made gift idea for Christmas this year. Lemon Honey (or Lemon Curd as it is sometimes known).

Picture to follow

2 large juicy lemons

50g Butter

1 Cup sugar

2 eggs beaten

Place rind and juice of the lemons in the top part of a double boiler with water simmering underneath. Add butter and sugar and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add well beaten eggs and stir gently for 10-15 minutes until egg incorporated and mixutre thickens. Be careful not to boil mixture or egg will set in clumps/strands. Pour into jars and refrigerate. Use as an alternative to jam, and makes a good filling for cakes or deserts.

Stickability and Lemon Pudding. Yes, totally logical.

What happened to Monday Monday? I don’t know…I was sick and here we are and already it’s Tuesday Tuesday.

I don’t know why I do this to myself all the time. That is, give myself extra pressures in things that don’t really matter. Like posting every day for a month for example! It’s day 9, I’m already a day behind, and I still have 21 days left in the month and diddly-squat to say. Silly me. But I won’t give up. I’m like that.

(It’s my mother’s voice in my head. The exact words elude me, but something like….’if you start something you finish it’. I used to agree. I used to think it was the right thing to do.. that if you start something or make a commitment to something you should always follow through. So, if you start a ballet class, and decide you hate it, you should at least stick it out until the end of the term. If you start a book, you should finish it, even if you don’t like it… just for the sake of perseverance, ‘stickability‘ as my Mum says. And you know what….it’s true sometimes. I think it’s important to have perseverance even when things get hard. Life is hard and it’s good to have the strength of character to hang in there sometimes even if you want to bail. But I’m starting to learn that also there is a time for recognising a bad decision and getting the heck out of there. It is not such a bad thing to admit you’ve made a mistake.)

Anyway, it’s all quiet in our house this afternoon…my older two are off playing at a friends house, and the little one is asleep. D is home (took the day off to look after me because I was sick yesterday, but now I’m better. Whoops. But then his car wouldn’t start this morning, so it was rather convenient that he’s off so he’s out there now tinkering with it) Often when our house is quiet and I have a little more time on my hands, I get a little more inspired about dinner. Most of the time I consider myself a reluctant cook, but tonight I feel like making a nice little pudding for desert. It’s easy and delicious and reminds me of a childhood favourite which we called Lemon Swiss Delicious.

Citrus Sponge Pudding

1 cup caster sugar

1/2 cup SR flour

3 tbsp desiccated coconut

1 tbsp finely grated lemon rind

1 tbsp finely grated orange rind

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp orange juice

2 eggs, separated

125g butter, melted and cooled

1 cup milk.

1) Combine sugar, flour, coconut, lemon rind, orange rind in a bowl. Beat in lemon juice, orange juice,  egg yolks, butter and milk.

2) Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold into citrus mixture. Pour mixture into  a greased 4 cup capacity oven proof dish. Place in a baking dish , with enough hot water to come halfway up sides of the pudding dish and bake at 180 C for 45 minutes or until cooked. (Will be slightly browned on top.)

Moving right along

So, where was I?…Oh, yes ahem. Moving on. This post is NOT going to be about.. ah… the thing I’m not posting about.

Right! Well, in other news. I bought a canvas yesterday and last night I set aside some time to not think about the you know what. I can’t draw to save myself, and can’t really paint either but it never hurt anyone trying and I just want to try. This is what came out of it.

I know it’s not very good, but I was ridiculously pleased with it. Don’t look too close though…it has some serious problems. It was fun to try and I was surprised to actually end up with something that does resemble something of what is in my head. I’m finding it hard to get the colours I want though. The sky is OK, but the sea should be more vibrant and less solid looking, if that makes any sense. ha ha ! You can tell I don’t know what I’m talking about! Sorry to all you artists out there.

Also, the overall thing looks a bit more child like than I imagined…..it’s the primary-ness of the colours I think.

Oh, and it’s all the wrong size. You see, although bought a stretched canvas, I actually painted it on a sheet canvas pad because I thought it’d be so bad it’d be a waste of a good canvas. Hmmm… positively exuding confidence aren’t I?

And tonight, I’m washing my hair with my new and deliciously natural Rosemary Shampoo bar! Oh, wow. Why didn’t I know about these before. I’ve tried being ‘poo free’ before using baking soda and it just didn’t last. Found that I couldn’t’ get my hair really clean because it was hard to massage through all my hair. My new shampoo bar is so lovely though! It’s a natural product made from Almond and Coconut oils and it froths really nicely without those nasty chemical frothers. (SLS?) I follow up with a vinegar rinse which I infused with rosemary from our garden. Here’s how:

VINEGAR ROSEMARY RINSE

1 litre hot water

3/4 cup vinegar

1 sprig rosemary

1 apple/chamomile tea bag for fragrance. (‘Cept I didn’t have any tea bags except Rooibos and ordinary old tea.)

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That’s it. When it cools of course. Just pour over 1/2 to 1 cup full over your hair as a rinse. I let most of it rinse out with water. Not sure if you’re meant to leave it in or rinse it out. Ha! Aren’t I the expert?! Anyway, my hair was manageable, no where near as tangly as I expected without using my usual 1/4 cup of conditioner, and doesn’t smell like vinegar at all! That’s a bonus clearly!

I’m not going to tell you where I got the Shampoo bar. Not yet anyhow. More on that another day. (Because I promised not to go on about the *whispers* you know what)

Apple Cinnamon Coffee Cake

My Mum’s recipe. She tells me she can’t count the number of people who have asked her for the recipe. I made it the other day for the first time and shared it with a friend who has asked for the recipe. So, it’s a goody. And pretty easy too. (Shown here without the almonds because of an allergy in the family)

CAKE:

225g butter

450g sugar

3 eggs

1 cup milk

450g Self raising flour – sifted

3 apples peeled and sliced

1/2 cup chopped almonds

TOPPING:

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp butter melted

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time and combine. Add flour and milk and beat until smooth. Put half of mixture into a greased 24 x 24cm cake tin. Spread sliced apples over cake mix and top with remaining cake mixture. Sprinkle with almonds. Bake at 220 C for approx 35 minutes. Test with skewer.

Mix together sugar and cinnamon. Brush cake with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture.

Serve cold with coffee, or warm with cream and/or ice cream.

Freezes well.

Fermentation Fun

Rachael over at Intricate Simplicity told us about her sourdough bread today. I have also been baking sourdough recipes. I’ve made sourdough breads, pizza bases and even cookies. If you’ve never tried sourdough bread, don’t be put off by the sound of it. I was at first… just think normal home made bread without commercially made yeast. Tastes better though! We always chomp into it hot from the oven with butter.

Here’s a recipe (not my original)

SOURDOUGH BREAD

2 cups sourdough starter

2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup milk

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

3 cups white flour

Melt butter over moderate heat, add milk and warm. Add sugar and salt and stir until dissolved. Add this mixture to starter in a large bowl and mix well. Add flour 1 cup at a time mixing well. Spoon batter into a loaf tin (or form dough with hands into a loaf and place on a baking tray). Allow to rise 1-2 hours. Bake in preheated oven at 180C for 45 minutes.

I get the best results when the starter is freshly ‘proofed’ which just means removed from fridge and fed (1 cup flour, 1 cup warm water) and left until very frothy. It gets a sweetish yeasty alcohol like smell. I usually do this at night and leave out overnight before baking. Don’t forget to feed your started after baking so that you always have a couple of cups fermenting away. I’ve also made this with added ground linseed, and it worked well.

There’s something really lovely about sourdough baking… when I made pizza bases, the house smelt like a real Pizza shop. (Is it ‘smelled’ or ‘smelt’?) It would have been easier to say “when I make pizza bases, the house smells like a pizza shop.” but I’m going to leave it now because maybe someone will be able to correct my grammar! (And I am going to teach my kids grammar???)

Here’s a pic of my starter nice and frothy…