These are some of my favourite muffins and one of the most delicious ways to use rhubarb. The combination of the tart rhubarb and buttermilk with the crunchy sugar and cinnamon crust is a match made in heaven. Try them warm out of the oven and try and stop at one!
Ingredients (makes 16) For the rhubarb mixture
1 bunch rhubarb, washed, ends trimmed
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons sugar
For the muffins
1 cup rhubarb mixture
1 ¼ cups plain flour
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
¾ cup buttermilk
¾ cup olive oil
1 egg
For the sugar-cinnamon crust
⅓ cup sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
Method Preheat the oven to 180°C fan-forced. Line muffin tins with 16 patty pans.
Chop rhubarb into small, even pieces and cook with water and sugar in a small saucepan over a medium heat until the rhubarb is tender and the sugar has dissolved. Stand for 5 minutes to cool.
Add flour, sugar and baking powder into a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Carefully pour in the buttermilk, olive oil and egg and gently stir to combine. Mix in the cooked rhubarb, being careful not to over-stir (note: the mixture is supposed to be very wet, don’t worry!)
Spoon mixture evenly into muffin cases & top with mixed sugar and cinnamon.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Top with extra stewed rhubarb and cream if desired. Enjoy!
This was the main component of the dessert I made for Mother’s Day (in addition to the raspberry sorbet) and it was a winner with everyone. It’s not difficult to make (but looks it) and is the perfect conclusion to any meal.
Ingredients (serves 10) 4 egg yolks
2 eggs
¼ cup caster sugar
⅓ cup thickened cream
300g dark chocolate, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Also known as honey jumbles or honey crackles, these delicious sweet treats were a staple birthday party food of my childhood. They always bring back wonderful memories and I really should make them more often as they require incredibly little effort & take about 10 minutes to make from start to finish.
Ingredients (Makes approximately 40 small or 16-20 large) 1 heaped tablespoon of good quality honey
60g butter
90g sugar
125g cornflakes
Method Preheat oven to 150°C.
Melt butter, sugar & honey in a small saucepan over a medium heat.
Pour gradually over cornflakes in a large bowl, and stir until well mixed.
Place dessert spoonfuls of mixture into small paper patties, and bake for 6 minutes.
When my family lived in Canberra, our lovely friends would bring us some Figolli (traditional Maltese Easter biscuits) every Easter Sunday. As they were such a favourite with all of us, when we moved to Adelaide we decided that we couldn’t be without Figolli at Easter, and so we started making them ourselves.
This has just been our third Easter in Adelaide and I’m pretty confident that we’ve perfected them by now – consistently getting a rich buttery biscuit outside and perfectly chewy almond-citrus filling. We tend to to make ours round (although by all means use any shape you like) and decorate them simply with pastel icing and topped with an Easter egg. Do yourself a favour and try them!
Ingredients (makes approx. 24) Pastry 400g plain flour, sifted 175g caster sugar 200g butter 2 egg yolks Grated rind of ½ a lemon
Method In a food processor, blitz flour, sugar & butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add egg yolks, lemon zest & sufficient cold water to bring the dough together. Knead gently to form a smooth ball and then cover in cling film and refrigerate for 20mins.
Meanwhile, add the lemon zest, orange blossom water, egg whites & sugar to the ground almonds. Mix until combined.
Preheat oven to 180°C or 160°C fan-forced.
Roll pastry out to a 1-1½mm thickness on a lightly floured surface. Use a 7cm diameter round cutter to cut out 2 circles of pastry.
Spread almond paste on one half and lay matching shapes on top, pressing the edges together.
Repeat with remaining mixture. Bake on a tray lined with baking paper for approximately 20-30 mins or until golden brown.
Make the icing by combining icing sugar, butter, milk and vanilla in a medium bowl with electric beaters. Add a touch of extra icing sugar or milk to reach desired consistency. Add a drop or two of food colouring. Set aside.
Allow biscuits to cool before decorating with icing & Easter eggs.
Adapted from ‘The Food and Cookery of Malta’ (1999)
I love this cake, it’s so quick and effortless to put together and is absolutely delicious (also, because it contains carrot it’s basically a salad, right?!). It’s great at any time of year but is particularly good as a treat around Easter for someone who doesn’t like chocolate or for people who are chocolated out!
Ingredients (serves 8-10)
1 ½ cups grated carrot (lightly packed)
½ cup chopped walnuts
1 cup plain flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
1 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon mixed spice
¾ cup vegetable oil
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon vanilla
To decorate (if desired): Extra chopped walnuts
The thin end of a small carrot cut into 2 halves
4 sprigs of coriander
Method Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced).
Grease an 8″ round cake pan with margarine and line the base with baking paper.
Combine eggs, sugar, oil, vanilla & sifted dry ingredients in a large bowl & beat on low speed.
Stir in carrots & walnuts. Mix well.
Pour mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake in the oven for approx. 40 – 45mins or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Let the cake cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes, before placing it on a wire rack to cool completely.
To make the cream cheese frosting, beat butter & cream cheese until smooth and creamy. Add in the lemon rind and icing sugar and beat until smooth. Spread evenly over the top and sides of the cake.
If desired, decorate by placing the finely chopped walnuts around the edge of the cake and the carrot pieces in the centre of the cake with two coriander sprigs above each carrot. Enjoy!
Happy Pi Day everyone! And what an exciting one it is (3.14.15).
This pie is perfectly seasonal – being both a pie (for Pi day) and a fabulous shade of green which is appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day next week 🙂
It’s also very easy to make and a delicious way to take advantage of the abundance of limes we are lucky to have at this time of the year.
Method Preheat oven to 170°C. In a shallow 20-23cm pie dish, press combined biscuit crumbs, sugar & butter into the base and up this sides, making a small rim.
In a medium bowl, whisk condensed milk with lime juice, zest and egg yolks until the mixture thickens. Add 1-2 drops of green food colouring.
In a small bowl with electric mixer on full power, beat egg whites to stiff peaks. Gently fold into lime mixture.
Pour lime filling into the biscuit crust and smooth the top.
Bake the pie for 15-20 mins or until lime filling is just firm.
Cool pie in this dish and then refrigerate until chilled, approximately 3 hours.
Whip cream in a small bowl until stiff peaks form. Pipe a border of cream around the edge of the pie and top with h lime wedges if desired. Enjoy!
Adapted from Mary Berry’s ‘Key lime Pie’ in Step By Step Desserts and Confections.
I haven’t made a giant cupcake for about 18 months but I’m so glad I found my giant cupcake cases again because they’re so much fun to make (and eat!) They’re also really easily adaptable as you can make them any flavour you like and decorate them in a million different ways. This time I’ve used buttercream roses but you could ice it as simply (or complexly) as you like – there’s a link to my fondant ‘soft serve’ icing instructions at the bottom of the page.
Cupcake Case 375g white chocolate melts or Wilton candy melts
Buttercream icing 250g butter, softened
800g icing sugar
1 ½ tablespoons vanilla extract
4 tablespoons of milk
Food colouring
Method Spray silicone giant cupcake pan liberally with canola oil and preheat oven to 160°C fan-forced.
Cream together butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add in vanilla and then eggs, one at a time, ensuring that each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next. Add in half of the flour followed by two tablespoons of the milk, and then add remaining flour and milk. Mix until just combined.
Fill the giant cupcake pans, starting with the cupcake top. Fill until approximately 2cm shy of the top of the pan. Then fill the bottom pan with the remaining batter.
Bake in the oven for between 40-70 minutes, checking regularly. Note: the cupcake top will bake faster than the bottom so take it out before the bottom is done. The cake is ready when a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Leave cakes in their pans for at least 20 minutes before gently peeling the silicone off and allowing the cakes to cool completely on a cooling rack.
Image credit: The Pink Whisk
While the cakes are cooling, wash and dry the bottom cupcake pan ready to make the cupcake case. Melt half the chocolate/candy melts and pour into the bottom cupcake pan. Spread evenly up the sides using a pastry brush. Refrigerate for 20 minutes and then repeat with the remaining melts. Refrigerate for 30 minutes and then gently peel off the silicone mould.
Image credit: She Who Bakes
Image credit: She Who Bakes
Image credit: She Who Bakes
Using a serrated bread knife, trim around bottom cake so all crunchy edges are removed. Level top (of base) and then cut base in half. Cut off bottom layer off top piece. Level base (of top).
Make buttercream by beating all ingredients but the food colouring until light and fluffy. Set half aside for the crumb coat, and then add the food colouring to the remaining buttercream.
Put a 1cm thick coating of the uncoloured buttercream between 2 bottom layers of cake and then between the base and top (ensure level – cut if necessary). Then put a thin layer of buttercream on the inside of the chocolate case and gently ease cake into it. Cover top of cake liberally with buttercream to form a protective barrier against crumbs.
Put the coloured buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a Wilton 2D nozzle (to make roses) or equivalent, and pipe icing in a rose swirl pattern, starting from the bottom of the cake and working your way up.
Decorate with icing flowers, sprinkles, silver cachous, glitter… basically whatever you like!
Wow! Only a week and a day until Christmas 🙂 It’s warming up around here which means that having the oven on and heating the house isn’t ideal and so I’ve had a couple of organised baking spells to try and minimise the amount of oven time.
I made these cupcakes yesterday for an afternoon tea with friends and they’re easy and delicious (and still soft & moist today).
For decorations, go as crazily festive as you like. There are plenty of cute Christmas sugar icing decorations that are cheap and readily available, you could make up a range of different coloured icings and pipe a wreath on them or something along those lines (if you can be bothered), or do as I did, and cut out some holly out of ready-made fondant icing.
Of course, these cupcakes aren’t reserved just for Christmas time, they would work equally well as birthday cupcakes with piped icing and candles!
Ingredients (Makes 24) Cupcakes
150g softened butter
⅔ cup caster sugar
2 tspns vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 ⅓ cups self raising flour, sifted
4 tblspns cocoa, sifted
½ cup buttermilk
1 ½ tblspns of good quality red food colouring (I use Wilton’s, you may need to adjust the amount depending on the brand you use)
To Decorate Ready made white fondant icing
Red food colouring
Green food colouring
Holly leaf cutter (or stencil)
Sharp Knife
Method Preheat oven to 160°C fan-forced. Place butter, caster sugar and vanilla into a large bowl and beat with electric mixer until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, beating until well combined. Add the flour, cocoa, buttermilk and food colouring and beat on a low speed until just combined.
Divide mixture into cupcake tins lined with (green) patty pans. Bake for 15-20 minutes (depending on your oven) or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the largest cupcake comes out clean. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
While the cupcakes are cooking and cooling, divide half of the fondant icing into 2 and colour one lot vibrant red, and the other a deep (holly-ish) green. Roll out the green fondant with a rolling pin and cut out 48 holly leaves. Then, using a sharp non-serated knife, mark out a leaf pattern by running the knife through the centre so that it leaves an incision but does not cut through. Then cut diagonal incisions from the centre out so that it looks like the veins of a leaf (see picture below).
Pull small pieces of the red fondant off and roll into 48 small balls to make the holly berries.
Once the cupcakes are almost completely cool, start making the cream cheese icing. Place the cream cheese and butter into a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer for 8-10 minutes. Add the icing sugar and vanilla and beat for a further 5 minutes or until completely smooth. Add the milk and beat until just combined.
Ice each cupcake with a generous amount of icing and top with 2 leaves and 2 berries. Enjoy!
Recipe adapted from Donna Hay’s recipe ‘red velvet cupcakes with sugared cranberries’.
Only 12 days until Christmas!! I LOVE Christmas time (and I mean LOVE) and have been madly baking and decorating along to Christmas tunes ready for the big day. I have also been joined by a little puppy, Bailey, who has made baking more of a challenge but has by no means curbed my enthusiasm for it.
These adorable reindeer tartlets are delicious and so easy to make – a perfect recipe to involve the kids in and to take to the multitude of Christmas functions where you need to ‘bring a plate’. If you don’t want all the reindeer to be Rudolphs, feel free to swap the jaffas for brown m&ms 🙂
Ingredients (makes 20) 1 packet Butternut Snap Biscuits (or equivalent)
65g butter, chopped
⅓ cup cream
200g dark chocolate melts
Approximately 10 white marshmallows, halved
20 jaffas or equivalent red lollies
20 white mini marshmallows, halved
Chocolate writing icing (or black icing pen, or additional melted chocolate applied with a toothpick)
1 packet of pretzels
Method Preheat oven to 160°C fan-forced. Place 1 biscuit per hole in a 12-hole, round-based tartlet tin. Bake for 2-3 minutes or until soft. Remove from oven. Carefully press softened biscuits into tin to mould into a cup shape (use a spoon to make it easier if you like). Allow to cool slightly before transferring to a plate and repeating with remaining biscuits.
Heat butter, cream and chocolate in a saucepan over very low heat. Stir constantly for approximately 5 minutes or until melted and smooth. Pour into a clean, dry bowl and refrigerate for 20 minutes or until cool but not set.
Fill biscuit cases with 1 heaped teaspoon of chocolate mixture. Refrigerate until set.
While the ganache is setting, carefully cut pretzels in half and trim so it looks like a lower case ‘f’ for the antlers (I seem to break as many as I successfully cut so that’s why I recommend allowing a full packet!!)
Gently press 1 marshmallow half, sticky side up into each tartlet.
Attach 1 jaffa to each marshmallow.
Attach 2 mini marshmallow halves above nose, cut-side up, to form eyes. Use an icing pen/or a spot of chocolate ganache applied with a toothpick to create the pupils.
Place 2 pretzel pieces above eyes. Press to secure. Serve & enjoy!
Recipe adapted from Arnott’s ‘Chocolate Butternut Snap Tartlets’ recipe.
Pic from Inspired Taste (mine got eaten too quickly!)
Even though Thanksgiving isn’t really a holiday celebrated here in Australia, this year my family decided to get in on the action anyway as a number of us will be away over Christmas (and we like to party with or without good reason). So, in keeping with tradition, I made a pumpkin pie for dessert. I had no idea what to expect having never tried one before, but gave a highly rated recipe I found online a go and was really pleased with the result. If I didn’t know there was pumpkin in there (and it wasn’t orange) I wouldn’t pick it because it’s really the vanilla and spices that come to the fore, with the pumpkin providing a creamy, sweet back note. Pumpkin-y or not it was delicious and I’ll probably make it again when pumpkins are in season.
Filling
2 cups pumpkin puree (made by roasting pumpkins, scooping out the flesh, blitzing it into a smooth paste in a blender and then putting it in a sieve for an hour or so to remove the excess juice)
3 large eggs
½ cup sugar
⅓ cup brown sugar
¾ cup cream
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
A pinch of salt
1 quick grind of pepper (i.e. a really small amount, sounds odd but it works!)
Method To make the pastry, put the flour, icing sugar, butter, yolk & water into a food processor and process until it just comes together. Press into a ball, knead gently on a floured surface until smooth & then refrigerate, covered in clingfilm, for 30 mins.
Preheat the oven to 200°C fan-forced. Lightly grease a 23cm flan tin or pie dish.
When the pastry has chilled, roll dough on a floured surface until large enough to line the tin (I often have a bit left over). Lift pastry into tin, ease into the sides & then trim the excess.
Cover the pastry with a sheet of baking paper and fill with pie weights or uncooked rice. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk eggs and sugar until smooth. Add the pumpkin puree, cream, vanilla and spices and stir until all incorporated.
Pour mixture into pastry case (obviously remove the baking paper and pie weights first!!) and smooth over the top. I ended up having a bit of pumpkin filling left over that I might use in muffins or something (if I don’t eat it all first :P)
Bake pie in the oven for 10 minutes before reducing the heat to 160°C fan-forced for around 30-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Let cool completely before transferring to a serving platter and then serve at room temperature with whipped cream or ice cream. Enjoy!
Pic from Inspired Taste (mine got eaten too quickly!)
Pastry recipe from the Australian Women’s Weekly Lemon Meringue Pie Recipe & Filling Recipe from Inspired Taste.net
Bakerholics Anonymous 