floating world

chickpea and apricot cake (+ some links)

It was cold and grim this weekend, so perfect for baking. I made a huge batch of baby food for Ali, an apple and rhubarb crumble and this chickpea and apricot cake. It was really yummy, and since it has chickpeas in it I feel quite virtuous eating it.

125g dried apricots
300ml apricot nectar
2 cups cooked chickpeas (1 can)
3/4 cup brown sugar
250g sifted self-raising flour
100g (1 cup) dessicated coconut
50ml olive oil
4 egg whites

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Grease and line the base of a 10 x 23cm loaf tin.
Soak apricots and nectar in a bowl for 20 minutes. Transfer to a saucepan, and simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add chickpeas, and cook for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Place in a food processor and blitz until smooth. Add the sugar and blend for a few more seconds. Tip into a bowl, and fold in the flour, coconut and a pinch of salt. Add the oil and 100ml of water, and stir to make a smooth batter.

In a separate bowl beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gently fold into the batter until combined. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for 1 hour, until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. (If it browns too quickly, cover with foil.) Turn onto a wire rack to cool.

Dust with icing sugar, and serve warm with natural yogurt and honey. Or leave it to cool, make a drizzle icing with some icing sugar and warm water, and sprinkle dessicated coconut on top.

(This is from an old issue of Delicious magazine, but I cut the recipe out and stuck it in a folder so I have no idea which one - sorry!)

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Some Links:
I really like the colours and contrasts in Jan Vorman's work Dispatchwork... he fixed old Italian walls with Lego. So cool, see photos here.
And I finally finished reading Three Cups of Tea, which I loved. It's such an inspiring story, and I learned a lot about the culture and history of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the way that people live there. I highly recommend the book, and you can find out more work about Greg Mortensen and the Central Asia Institute here and here.

hooray for chocolate slice (& links)

Good things from the internet:
Very quick to make and extremely yummy chocolate slice. Recipe from Sadie and Lance. Make some now! It's even quicker than the brownies, and as a bonus doesn't require chocolate.
Cool shoes from Andrea & Joen. I'm all about flats right now, and their Sunday range has lots of cute ones
Stick on wall decorations. I am considering this one for our bedroom. Or maybe this one
Two Thousand email magazine / Sydney guide
The lovely Icing blog
The Powerhouse Museum photo archive on Flickr
This gorgeous quilt, and this one too, found via Hop Skip Jump. I am extremely tempted to make one for my bed.
Beautiful prints from Yuki
Tapettitalo: gorgeous wallpaper from Finland. Can you tell I have decorating on the brain?

Ali and I are both much less snotty now, and it's a 4 day week here (Anzac Day is on Friday) so life is good.

chocolate brownies

Because it's raining, I'm tired and the whole house is covered in Cruskit. And because chocolate makes everything better.

Update
Here's the recipe. It's super quick to make, doesn't use much kitchen equipment and they feel very decadent to eat. It's from Donna Hay Modern Classics 2

200g chocolate (dark cooking chocolate is good. For the last batch I used Spanish cooking chocolate and half a Lindt dark chocolate bunny)
250g butter
1 and 3/4 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
1/3 cup cocoa
1 and 1/4 cups plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C (325F)

Melt chocolate and butter in a bowl over a saucepan of water on low heat. Stir until it is all melted. Allow to cool slightly.
Add sugar, sifted flour and cocoa, eggs and baking powder to the bowl. Mix until combined.

Pour into a 20cm (8") square slice tin lined with baking powder. Bake for 50 minutes or until set. Cool slightly in the tin and cut into slices. Makes 16 slices. (I used a rectangular tin and cut it into 20 slices. It is really dense and rich, so smallish slices are good).

Make a cup of coffee, collapse on sofa and enjoy.

chocolate easter nests

My grandmother used to make things called Chocolate Spiders, which were from a recipe on the back of the packets of Chang's Crispy Noodles. I remember them from when I was about ten, and the same recipe is still on the packets (there is also one for a salad with Chinese cabbage and noodles and a sweet and sour dressing, which is awesome). These are Chocolate Spiders with the addition of little eggs, which transforms them into Easter Nests. I love them because they are incredibly easy to make, and taste all nostalgic and retro. Plus, as far as I am concerned, anything that involves both chocolate and peanut butter can't go wrong.

I'm trying to find paper doilies (When did supermarkets stop selling paper doilies? What is the world coming to?) so I can bag them up in cellophane with doilies and fluffy chickens and give them to people we see between now and Easter.

To make them you need:
- I packet of Chang's Crispy Fried Noodles (you get these from the supermarket in Australia... I never saw them in the UK or Japan, but I'm sure there are other brands of fried noodles around)
- 200g chocolate, dark or milk
- 2 tablespoons peanut butter
- Sugar coated eggs. Cadbury's Mini Eggs look all pretty and pastel, but I couldn't find them so used M&M eggs.

Instructions:
- Melt chocolate over water, or in the microwave
- Stir in peanut butter and noodles
- Put teaspoonfuls on trays lined with baking paper
- Top with eggs
- Refrigerate
- Decorate liberally with chenille chickens. And doilies, if you can find them.

jam with hats

Apricots were cheap last week, so I made another batch of jam over the weekend. And then I made labels and little fabric hats for the jars, and some for the peach chutney I had made a couple of weeks earlier. All this grandma-type activity was surprisingly pleasing, especially when I found some peach print fabric lurking in the bottom of a pile. Completely unnecessary, but they do look kind of cute.

very easy spicy apple cake

The food processor and electric beaters are wonderful inventions, but I really love cakes that you can make with just a bowl and wooden spoon - the whole process is so much quieter and quicker (and faster to clean up, too). My mum gave me the recipe for this apple cake and it's an instant favourite - it tastes good, is really quick to make, and with all the fruit and nuts it must almost count as a vegetable.

Ingredients:
3 cups peeled grated apple or 1 large can unsweetened pie apples*
1.5 cups sugar
3/4 cup seedless raisins or sultanas
3/4 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
2 eggs
3/4 cup cooking oil
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 cups plain flour
1.5 teaspoons bicarb soda
1.5 teaspoons cream of tartar**
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon allspice

Method:
Put the apples and sugar in a bowl, mix, and leave to sit for half an hour.
Add the raisins and walnuts and mix well.
Then add the eggs, oil and vanilla and mix some more.
Sift the remaining ingredients together 3 times*** and add to the apple mixture.
Mix well with a wooden spoon.

Spread into a greased and lined 23cm round tin**** and bake in a 180 C oven for around 1 hour, or until cooked when tested.
Cool in tin for 30 minutes and then turn out on a wire rack.
Serve dusted with icing sugar.

Notes:
* I used the canned apples - much quicker, and they are nice and soft
** I was out of cream of tartar and wanted to make this anyway, so I just left it out and used an extra half teaspoon of baking powder instead, which didn't seem to cause any ill effect in the finished cake
*** I sifted them once because I am lazy, and the cake was fine
**** I used a ring tin and it only took 50 minutes

Random Piece of Cookery Trivia:
I googled "what does cream of tartar do?" to see if it was crucial in cakes, and discovered that it is made from the residue left inside wine casks after wine is fermented and drained out. According to this site there is a whole industry of short people in Italy who are employed to scrape out casks for McCormick & Co. Who would have guessed?

rolling

After owning this little machine for more than three years, I finally used it for the first time yesterday. Despite the assurances of Jamie Oliver et al I had been put off making pasta - it just seemed fiddly and tedious. But then my friend Kath, who is an experienced DIY pasta-maker came over to instruct, and it was shockingly quick and easy.

Now I am cross that I didn't work this out sooner.

I used the food processor for the dough, which was great because it has been the eggs-and-flour-all-over-the-bench thing that put me off. And then it took less than half an hour to roll the chilled dough into enough fettuccine for four of us. Now I need to find a new home for the machine, in a more accessible cupboard.

rain and jam

It keeps raining. It's rained since Thursday at least, with hardly a break. This is not good, especially since Ali is a chucky baby who gets through several outfits a day, and ensures that I do too. Thank goodness for the dryer, even if it does turn the house into a sweaty-smelling sauna.

Today we fought cabin fever by going to my mum's place to make jam, which was an excellent rainy day activity. I'd never made jam before, and was keen to do it with mum there in case I inadvertently poisoned people with botulism or Ali needed attention at a critical moment. It was actually easier than I expected. although definitely good to have an experienced jam-maker on hand to help me with jam-novice dilemmas such as whether to use a wooden or metal spoon, and how to get the jam into the jars without spilling it all over the kitchen floor. I used the apricot jam recipe from the Cook's Companion, and it gets the thumbs up - I've already eaten some on toast. You can't really tell in this photo because of the lack of natural light, but it's a beautiful deep orange colour and has a much more intense apricot flavour than bought apricot jam. On the strength of this, we're planning to do a big batch of peach chutney next week.

better, best

I'm not a very patient cook - usually if a recipe doesn't work out the first time I abandon it. But the cinnamon / oat / raisin / choc chip cookies had potential, so I remade them with the extra flour, and they worked out really well - much denser and doughier than the originals. They were my new favourite Christmas biscuits for about an hour, until I finished making these Orange and Cardamom biscuits, which are quite simply the yummiest biscuits ever. They make a huge batch, and are going to be given to assorted friends and relatives over the next few days.

For the record, the recipe for the choc chip / oat biscuits with my tampering is below. But you should make the orange and cardamom biscuits first.

Raisin, choc-chip and oat biscuits
95g (1/2 cup) raisins
125g butter, at room temperature
100g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
100g (1/2 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 3/4 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
75g (3/4 cup) rolled oats
100g dark choc bits

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper.

Cover raisins with boiling water in a mug. Set aside for 5 minutes to cool. Drain.

Beat together the butter and combined sugars in a bowl or food processor until pale and creamy. Beat in the egg, vanilla and cinnamon. Stir in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder until combined. Add the raisins, oats and choc bits and combine.

Make 1 teaspoon sized balls of mixture and put on the lined trays, allowing room for spreading. Bake in oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

cookies

I finally got a chance to make some cookies today. I used this recipe for Raisin and Choc Chip Oat biscuits (found via Jorth)

These were so so - they smell really good, but the mixture is quite thin so they spread a lot and ended up thinner and crispier than I wanted; I prefer doughier, denser biscuits. At first I used a tablespoon to put the biscuits on the baking sheet, as specified in recipe, and ended up with mega cookies, but even when I did the second batch with heaped teaspoons they were pretty big and flat.

I compared the recipe to the standard one I use for choc chip cookies (which I think is from my mum's original Australian Womens Weekly Biscuit cook book) and found that it is almost the same, except the AWW one uses a tiny bit more butter (125g) and a whole cup more flour. I think I'll try this recipe again, but use the AWW quantities, and add in the oats, raisins and cinnamon instead of the walnut pieces. I still want to make these biscuits (found via Fiona) - they sound really Christmassy and delicious. But these days everything is dependent on the almighty nap, so I'm not getting my hopes up too high...