How great are muffins? They take no time to make, are versatile and can even survive being made by Misses 4 and 6 and still taste great. I had a couple of over-ripe bananas sitting in the fruit bowl so turning them into muffins was the order of the day. I tweaked several different muffin recipes from various sources but reduced the amount of sugar as I find most recipes far too sweet.
I decorated these with a few peanut butter chips but they are very yummy without. Continue reading
I do love a choc chip. Often the introduction of choc chips to a recipe takes it from blah to wow, can I have more? As much as I love choc chip biscuits I find it tedious to be rolling/flattening/baking tray after tray. So when I stumbled across a recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars by the wonderful Two Peas and Their Pod I knew at once I’d be baking it. It all the boxes I was after. Choc chips. Vanilla. Crunchy. Kid-makeable. Continue reading
I adore Donna Hay. I love her magazine, her homewares, her style, her gorgeous store, everything. I’ve been lucky enough to meet her a few times and begged her for a job [no luck there, unfortunately]. I have every edition of her magazines and the vast majority of her cookbooks. All get a workout in my kitchen and her recipes are versatile, simple and usually no fuss.
For my mum’s birthday recently she decreed a ‘no gifts’ policy. The exception was anything home made. With this in mind I set about making her some gingerbread bickies. Mum adores gingerbread and I knew she’d love these.
The recipe is from Donna Hay Magazine issue 6. I use it every year to make gingerbread men at Christmas and it always turns out beautifully.
I dressed the biscuits up with dark chocolate glaze, another Donna Hay recipe, this time from the Simple Essentials – Chocolate book.
GATHER:
125g softened diced butter
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup golden syrup
2 ½ cups self-raising flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
LET’S GET TO IT:
Preheat oven to 190C, line two baking trays with baking paper.
Place butter and sugar in bowl of electric mixer and beat until light and creamy then add golden syrup.
Add sifted flour, ginger and bicarb soda and stir to combine.
Knead lighty on a floured benchtop to form a smooth dough.
Roll dough between two sheets of non-stick paper until 5mm thick. Use cookie cutter to cut out shapes.
Bake for 8 or so minutes/until golden.
Cool on trays.
When totally cold decorate with choc glaze.
CHOCOLATE GLAZE:
Melt 150g best quality dark chocolate with ½ cup pouring cream in a small pan over low heat, stirring until melted and smooth. Stand for 20 minutes to thicken. Then dunk the biscuits in the melted, gooey mix. Yum.
I keep a container of this in the fridge as it can be used to top a big cake, cupcakes, sandwich biscuits together, heated to pour over ice cream or eaten by the spoonful.
Want a quick, warming dessert for these cool autumn nights? This apple crumble is just about the easiest recipe you’ll ever make. As you can see from the photos I roped in Misses 4 and 6 and they did everything except using the oven. So put your kids to work and enjoy this dessert tonight. Continue reading
I’ve come across these biscuits before with different names but I think the genius cooks at The Australian Women’s Weekly have bestowed upon these sweet morsels the best name: chocolate lace crisps. Once again this recipe is from their bible Bake.
I’ve made these many times and despite not having an overly sweet tooth I adore them. According to the notes I’ve scrawled in my cook book I first made them for a mother’s day picnic in 2010 and I made them recently for another picnic that was called off [due to bad weather]. In fact I love them so much that they are used as my WordPress image.
These are so delicious due to the dark chocolate so make sure you don’t use nasty compound stuff or they won’t taste anywhere near as good.
GATHER:
100g chopped dark chocolate
80g butter, diced
1 egg
¾ cup caster sugar [or even a smidge less]
1 cup plain flour, sifted
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
¼ teaspoon bicarb of soda
¼ cup sifted icing sugar
LET’S GET TO IT:
Place chocolate and butter in a medium sized pan and melt over a very low heat until glossy and smooth.
Remove from heat, allow to cool for about five minutes, then stir in sugar, cocoa, flour, soda and egg.
Place in fridge for 10-15 minutes or until mix is firm enough to handle.
Heat oven to 180C and line two baking sheets with baking paper.
Place icing sugar on a small plate.
Make a ball [about the size of a golf ball] with mixture, roll in icing sugar and place on baking tray.
Bake 12-15 minutes and cool on trays.
This is a one bowl, super easy, kid-friendly chocolate cake. It isn’t glam and won’t impress baking experts but for morning tea or a fast dessert you can’t beat it. If you can turn on an oven you can make this chocolate cake, which is great served with ice cream, cream or even just a sprinkling of icing sugar on top.
Making it in a ring baking tin makes it look a little bit more fancy than using a round tin. You could fill the berries to serve if you want to up the glam factor.
It is from a book called Quick Mix Cakes by AWW.
GATHER:
125g melted butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cocoa powder [Dutch for preference]
1 cup self-raising flour
3/4 cup caster sugar
dash best vanilla
LET’S GET TO IT
Preheat oven to 170C, and grease a ring pan with non-stick cooking spray.
Place everything in bowl of electric mixer and beat until smooth and mixture has changed colour.
Pour into pan, bake 35-ish minutes/until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave in tin 5 minutes then remove to wire rack to cool.
The Hungry Mum family is meeting some friends in the morning for a beachside breakfast BBQ. We thought this mild autumn weather in Sydney would be a perfect time to catchup out of doors. Knowing how ravenous kids can be I baked some strawberry muffins for them to munch on while our breakfast poper is cooking. This recipe, from bestrecipes.com.au, was originally titled ‘Kim’s Moist Muffins.’ It is super easy and failsafe and versatile – everything you want in a muffin receipe [or any recipe, really]. If I knew how to link the site I would but I’m not that talented…
I had three punnets of strawberries in the fridge so I added some of those plus a handful of blueberries that were hanging around. I rounded that out with a pinch of allspice, which is my go to ingredient for all things baked. Kim herself suggested white choc & raspberry but almost anything can be used: mashed banana/sultanas/grated apple…
GATHER:
220g sifted self raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup of milk [or buttermik if you have it]
1/4 cup vegetable oil [not olive oil as it is too strong-tasting]
150g added flavours [eg strawberries]
LET’S GET TO IT:
Preheat oven to 170C and line a muffin tin with wrappers.
Place flour and sugar in a large bowl, stir with a wooden spoon.
In a jug place egg, oil and milk, whisk. Add to flour mix and stir until just mixed [do not over mix]
Add in flavours then pour into muffin pans.
Bake 15-20 mins / until golden.
These are fab warm but also can be frozen in a ziplock bag when completely cool.
This recipe is The Bomb. It is quick, requires a handful of ingredients, will rock your world and impress everyone who is lucky enough to sample even a drop of it. This sauce requires real, lux salt, not the nasty table salt that you can buy in massive pantry packs. Nigella has shown us again why she is the queen of all things decadent and divine with this recipe. Serve this with vanilla ice cream for a show stopper dessert. Add the salt in increments & taste as you go.
With thanks to Anna Warr [http://www.facebook.com/AnnaWarrPhotography] for her delish snaps.
GATHER:
50g brown sugar
50g caster sugar
50mL golden syrup
125mL double cream
75g unsalted butter, cubed
half to one-and-a-half teaspoons best quality salt [I use pink Murray River salt]
LET’S GET TO IT:
Melt butter, sugars and syrup in a small heavy pan and simmer for two to three minutes. Swirl, don’t stir, occasionally.
Slowly pour in cream and half a teaspoon of the salt and stir before tasting. Add a little more salt at a time if you desire.
Pour into serving jug and watch your guests drool.
There is no getting away from the fact that these biscuits are not what you call pretty. They aren’t even plain – they are lock-them-away-in-the-tower unattractive and they aren’t the type of sweet treat you’d see in upmarket eateries. But, if you squint or close your eyes as you take a bite you will understand that they are everything that a biscuit should be: sweet, chocolate-y, satisfying. So let’s remember that old cliche of looks not being important, shall we? This recipe is from Australian Good Taste but as usual, I tweaked it…
GATHER:
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup caster sugar
150g cubed butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cup self raising flour
1 egg
150g good chocolate [they use chopped up choc, I grabbed buttons and they worked fine]
2 tablespoons sifted cocoa powder
Dash best vanilla extract [if you only have vanilla essence – skip it! That stuff is evil and a poor imitation].
LET’S GET TO IT:
Preheat oven to 170C and line two large trays with baking powder.
Place both sugars, vanilla and butter in bowl of electric mixer and beat until creamy and changed colour.
Beat in the egg until combined then add flour and cocoa. Keep beating until everything is combined.
Stir in chocolate using a spoon.
Shape into golf ball size blobs and gently flatten.
Bake 12-ish minutes [you may need a fw more minutes depending on your oven].
Cool on wire racks.
At the the risk of alienating myself from, well, everyone, I am not a fan of pavlova. I find it too sweet and it is my least fav dessert. Sadly for me but luckily for the rest of the country, it is a staple at barbecues and parties everywhere. I’ve been known to make pavs when we’re having a do and it is always pounced upon before every other sweet.
This choc version of the aforementioned sweet is designed to be served warm with a chocolate custard sauce. I made the sauce but it didn’t make it into the photo as it is, well, super ugly. It serves 4. The recipe comes from my bible, The Australian Women’s Weekly ‘Bake’, a behemoth of a book that never lets me down. And thanks to photographer Anna Warr [www.facebook.com/AnnaWarrPhotography] for these lovely photos. Aren’t they great?
GATHER:
2 egg whites at room temperature
1 1/3 cups icing sugar [sifted]
1/3 cup boiling water
1 tablespoon cocoa powder [sifted]
LET’S DO IT:
Preheat oven to 180C and line a large oven tray with baking powder.
Beat egg whites, icing sugar and water in bowl of electric mixer for about 10 minutes or until firm peaks form. Fold in cocoa.
Drop four equal amounts of mix onto tray leaving considerable space between each.
Bake 25-ish minutes or until firm to the touch. Serve immediately with ice cream and dusted with extra cocoa.
the hungry mum 