Recipes and food

Comfort food

I’ve been looking though some of my blog posts and am surprised how many recipes I’ve posted!

We’re in for a cold snap this week so it’s the perfect time for some hot comfort food.

Here is a list for you to check out from my kitchen:

*Home made sausage rolls

*Silverbeet and ricotta pie

*Everyday bread

*Cheese and bacon scrolls

*Apple cinnamon porridge

*Coconut rice pudding

*Rhubarb and custard crumble

*Roasted pumpkin soup

*Homemade potato chips

*Pork and pepper casserole (not my recipe, but very awesome!)

*Home made pasta

*Cornflake slice

Hope you’re keeping warm!

Super Marshmallow Banana Apple Fluff cake!

by Kelly 4 Comments

My 9 year old daughter decided it was high time for her to write a new cake recipe. She has made her Apple choc cake so many times and wanted something a bit different. This is what she came up with – the Super Marshmallow Banana Apple Fluff Cake!

1 cup SR flour

120 grams butter, melted

1/2 cup white sugar

1 cup whole milk

2 eggs, whisked

2 tablespoons rolled oats

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons desiccated coconut

1 tablespoon honey

1 banana, mashed

1 apple, chopped into smallish pieces

5 marshmallows, chopped in half

slivered almonds for topping

Preheat oven to 170 (C). Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add milk and eggs and whisk in. Combine melted butter and honey, whisk in. Add the mashed banana, apple and marshmallows and stir with a wooden spoon. Pour the cake batter into a lined and greased cake tin, scatter slivered almonds over the top. Bake for 40 – 50 minutes, checking the centre with a skewer for doneness.

Please let us know if you try this recipe, my daughter loves to receive feedback. Also, please post your questions and let us know if we’ve missed anything important!

Home made peanut butter

by Kelly 6 Comments

We go through plenty of peanut butter here and our youngest daughter in particular is mad about it on toast for breakfast. She is also a huge Nutella devotee.

I had heard that peanut butter is really easy to make and I don’t know why I’ve never tried, but yesterday I was gripped with the thought this was something I needed to do!

I’m glad I did! It is different to store bought peanut butter (it tastes more nutty, more natural, more REAL!)

Why don’t you try it too? Here is how I made it:

* 500g roasted, salted peanuts

1 teaspoon of salt

2 teaspoons of honey

** 2 tablespoons of peanut oil

Place your nuts in a food processor. Blend until they are coarsely ground. At this point, if you want chunky peanut butter (like I did) take about 1/3 of the ground nuts out and set aside.

Add the salt and honey. Continue to blend until your mix is smooth or starts to look like a paste. Times really vary depending on your food processor, but it’s generally a couple of minutes to get to the paste stage. Now, drizzle your oil in and blend until it’s a smooth paste. Add your coarse nuts back in and mix through. Put your paste into a jar or sealed container. Drizzle a little more oil over the top as a seal.

I’ve been told that in needs to be kept in the fridge – I’m not sure if this is totally necessary, I think I will experiment by leaving some out to see how it goes.

* If you want to use peanuts from the shell or raw peanuts you can roast them yourself. Then just follow the steps from the beginning.

** If you find your paste is dry try adjusting the oil amount.

Isn’t that simple? Next up I want to try doing Nutella and almond butter would be fun too. Let me know if you give it a go!

Frugal February in the kitchen

by Kelly 4 Comments

The months of December through to March are our most challenging financially. Christmas, followed by holidays, plus bills and insurance mean that we really have to pull in the reigns and make an extra effort to save money. I thought I would share with you a few of the thrifty things I’ve been doing in the kitchen.

Last month I set myself a water challenge. It’s Summer here in Australia and we’re using a lot of water on the garden (we have a tank for the garden, but without rain there is no tank water).

*Place a container in the sink and use the water from rinsing fruit, vegetables and eggs on the garden.

* Run water into a jug while waiting for hot water – I get heaps of water this way, which either goes into our purification jug or onto the garden.

*Halve the amount of water you normally wash up with. There is no need to fill the sink with hot water to do the dishes! I’ve been really surprised by how little I can use for this purpose. This goes for floor washing too – you don’t need that much (not that I wash my floors all that often, ahem..)

Next up is the use of appliances and utilities (gas, electricity) in the kitchen.

*If steaming vegetables, boil until steaming is underway, turn off the gas and keep the lid on. I find this is enough to steam the veggies without having to use another 5 – 10 minutes of gas.

*The oven can also be turned off early. When I make bread, I turn off the oven 5 minutes before the bread is done and let it sit with the door closed. It stays hot enough to cook and it saves 5 minutes of cooking time. Add that up over a year and it would be a lot of time!

*Bake your own bread. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it saves us a lot of money. The whole family prefers homemade loaves too. I bake 4 at a time to get the most out of the oven.

*Think about the appliance before you use it. Is it really necessary to plug into the electricity if you can do it by hand? For example, we sweep hard floors instead of vacuuming, our cooking ingredients are often mixed by hand and all our dishes are done in the sink with no dishwasher.

I’d love to hear your frugal tips for February too!

Sourdough

by Kelly 2 Comments

I’ve tried sourdough starters from scratch many times. Some of the starters went really well but baked really poorly. Others just went off. I became despondent. But something about the warmer weather gets me to thinking about sourdough and I always feel like having another go. This time around I decided to increase my chances of success by buying a starter. I got a partially dehydrated starter from Sourdough Companion, followed the instructions to “wake it up” and away I went!

After the starter was activated (about 24 hours after adding water) I divided it in two to start the feeding stage. The one on the left was fed with organic white flour and filtered water. The one on the right was fed with wholemeal flour and filtered water. I wanted to divide them in case of disaster – my hope was that at least one would survive.
24 hours later they looked like they do in the picture above. Increased in size, lovely bubbly holes and a pleasant, slightly sour aroma.

After this first feeding the starter was ready to bake with. Wanting to remain on the cautious side, I decided to bake plain white loaves. Very simple ingredients – white flour, starter, salt and water.
I baked on a very warm day, so total rising time was around 6 hours, which was perfect. They turned out great!

Two days later I did my second bake. I kept the starters in the fridge in between and got them out for 2 hours before using. This time I tried overnight proving – one batch of dough in the fridge and one out on the bench top on a relatively cool night. I didn’t get as much rise (even overnight which ended up being about 14 hours total proving time!) However, the resulting bread still had a great taste and dense, springy texture.

I’m very happy to be able to add sourdough to my bread making repertoire and now plan to bake sourdough twice a week and yeasted bread once or twice a week (my 5 year old does not have the acquired taste for sourdough yet!) My starters are happily living in the fridge in between bakes and do very well after an outing and a feed.

Silverbeet and ricotta pie

by Kelly 2 Comments

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves crushed garlic

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 potato, finely chopped

300grams greens (silverbeet, spinach, kale, or a combination of greens)

450grams fresh ricotta

2 eggs

rind of 1/2 a lemon, grated

20grams grated parmesan

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste

2 sheets puff pastry (shop bought or homemade)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.

In a large frying pan, fry the onion in oil for 5 minutes. Add the garlic, celery, potato and silver beet (or greens). Continue frying until silver beet is wilting. Take off the heat and allow to cool a little.

Meanwhile, mash together in a large bowl the ricotta, eggs, lemon, parmesan, nutmeg and salt and pepper.

Grease your pie dish and lay a sheet of pastry as the base.

Mix the vegetables into the ricotta mixture until nicely blended. Place the mixture into the pie dish.

Cover with another sheet of pastry, pressing down around the edges of the dish. Slash a couple of slits in the top with a sharp knife.

Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes or until the pie is golden brown and layers of the pastry are separating slightly.

I think this pie would be wonderful with filo pastry as well, maybe some feta cheese crumbled in? Next time!

And, just for fun and because I do love pie!

Everyday bread

by Kelly 2 Comments

This is the recipe I make for a delicious yet not too time consuming bread for every day use. Makes 2 large loaves.

100g wholemeal flour

900g unbleached plain flour

2.5 teaspoons dried yeast

2.5 teaspoons salt

3 tablespoons sunflower oil

Approx 700ml warm water (varies with temp, dryness of flour etc)

Place all dry ingredients into your mixmaster’s mixing bowl with the dough hook fitted. Start machine on low and drizzle most of the water in. Allow to mix for a minute or so, then add more water if needed. The dough should be really moist but not so sticky it can’t be handled.

Keep mixing on low for at least 5 minutes. Turn out of bowl onto an oiled bench and oil the bottom and inside of the bowl. Place the dough back in the bowl, oil the top lightly and cover with plastic wrap. Leave for 1.5 hours or until double in size. In cooler weather this will take longer.

Turn the dough out onto a bench and cut in half with a sharp knife. Knead each piece lightly then shape into required shape. You can do freeform loaves or use bread tins – I do either depending on my mood 🙂 Freeform loaves can be placed on baking trays. Cover loaves with plastic wrap to rest.

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees (C). Allow the loaves to sit for 30 minutes. Slash the tops with a sharp knife and place in the oven. Set the timer for 5 minutes. When timer goes off, turn the temperature down to 230 degrees and set the timer to 30 minutes.

Remove from oven when done and cool on a baking rack.

Linking up with Creative Friday.

3 ways to save money today – Volume 8

by Kelly 5 Comments

1. Don’t buy cereal.
I’ve noticed a real drive by cereal companies for us to mimic American culture in our pursuit for cereal. It’s really expensive, usually unhealthy and really unnecessary! The only type of cereal I buy on a regular basis is Vita Brits, which I find affordable, nutritious and tasty. Occasionally I buy cereal for the kids for a birthday or treat, but I find the novelty wears off pretty quickly anyway.
Oats are fantastic. If you buy a generic brand they are cheap and really versatile. I’ve been making my own muesli, toasted and natural for years.
There are so many alternatives to cereal that are healthier and will cost a fraction of the price. Get googling and find some new, simple breakfast dishes.

2. Make your own bread.
Commercial bread is increasing in price constantly. Yes, you can still buy a cheap white loaf for around a dollar but I find these akin to eating fluff, not nice.
It’s not hard to make bread. It’s a time investment but once you get into a routine it’s very do-able. I’d like to say that I fully supply our family with home made bread but I’m not quite there yet. I’m happy to say that most of the time there is homemade bread in the pantry or freezer.
I have quite a few bread recipes right here on my blog:

Apple and Walnut bread
Wholemeal, rye and linseed bread
Spelt, honey and Linseed bread
Honey and Oat bread
My basic bread
My Everyday bread recipe

3. Make your own toilet spray.
We pay a lot of money for the privilege of spraying chemicals around in our home and it’s not at all necessary! A small spray bottle, some water and some essential oil that you like the scent of, and you’re done. Experiment with quantities of oil to water to get the ratio that suits you. A good essential oil can be a bit of an investment in terms of dollars, but when you consider how long one bottle will last you it’s much cheaper than buying a chemical laden spray.

Brrr, it’s cold!

by Kelly 2 Comments

Yes, Winter is well and truly here but thankfully I have many activities to keep busy and warm. This is my last handspun skein.

I used my hand dyed “Mixed Berry” roving and employed the fractal spinning technique and it worked out beautifully!

The garden has slowed down but we are harvesting all those lovely winter veg now. Our son and I (so lovely to have a kitchen helper!) cooked up a big pot of garden harvested veggie soup with barley tonight.

And garlic bread made from scratch was the perfect accompaniment.

This is my newest colour way, now in the Etsy shop.

And I dyed some of that gorgeous First Edition roving in the same colour way. This is now on my spinning wheel and looking splendid.

So, Winter isn’t all cold hands and noses, there are many delightful things about it too 🙂

What about you. Cool weather? Or warm?

Apple walnut bread

by Kelly 3 Comments

Here is the 2nd recipe from my recently inspired brain 🙂

Makes 2 large loaves.

150grams wholemeal flour

850grams white bread flour

3 teaspoons instant dry yeast

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

2 teaspoons salt

3 tablespoons butter

300ml milk

1 teaspoon molasses

350ml warm water

1 apple, peeled and chopped finely

100g chopped walnuts

Heat milk, butter and molasses until butter has just melted.

Place all dry ingredients into mixer with dough hook attached. (Yes, you can make by hand, just mix with wooden spoon at this point).

Start the mixer on low and gradually pour in the milk mixture, followed by the warm water. Allow to mix for 5 minutes, then add apple and walnuts. Mix for a further 5 minutes on low. (Or by hand until well mixed, then knead for at least 5 minutes). The mixture is very moist.

Make an oil spot on your bench (any veg oil is fine) and tip the dough onto it. Oil the inside of the bowl and place the dough back in, cover with oiled plastic wrap. Allow to rise for an hour.

Tip the dough back onto the oiled bench and cut in half with a sharp knife. Don’t knead or attempt to press the air out. Gather the dough at the top of each piece so that it become circular or oval shape. Turn upside down onto a baking tray lined with baking paper (so that the smooth side is now facing up). Repeat with other loaf. Re-cover with the plastic wrap.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees (C) while the loaves sit for 20 minutes.

Slash loaves with a sharp knife (if desired).

Bake for 5 minutes at 250, then turn down to 220 degrees (C) for a further 30 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack. Delicious warm with butter and cold with home made jam 🙂

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you use my recipe and suggestions for improvements are also welcome.

Would you like my recipes to be printable? Let me know, then I’ll find out how to get the print option thingy!