Savoury Onion Jam (and how I'm trying to get my mojo back)

As the first post in my new plan to blog at least once a week, I don't really expect it to be particularly good - I'm way out of practice in organising my thoughts into something coherent and entertaining.

I still haven't been able to figure out if I've stopped crafting and cooking because I'm feeling low, or if I'm feeling low because I've stopped crafting and cooking. This week, I'm really trying to force myself to do a bit of both, in the hopes that the act of doing will help me feel more like myself, which in turn will (hopefully) make me want to do it more. Fingers crossed, because I could really use a boost right now.

Last school term we held our inaugural school disco. I did heaps of organising, and had an amazing group of people to work with. I think it went pretty well - we've had some good feedback and the kids all seemed to have a blast.

While the kiddies were all boogying inside, some brave souls (dads, mostly) stood outside in the winter night and BBQ'd about 250 sausages, as well as frying up some onions to go with them. The onions were not as popular as we expected, so we were left with about 5 kilos of (uncut, thankfully) onions. At the end of the night, I gathered up all the perishables and brought them home. I've been staring at the huge bag of onions for about 2 weeks before I figured out what to do with them all!

[Aside - I'm not profiting from the BBQ here, but the onions won't last until our next BBQ, so I've taken ownership of them, and I'll buy a new 5kg of onions when the time comes...]

I thought about French Onion Soup, but my lot aren't big soup eaters - M says that if you can't eat it with a fork, it doesn't count as a real meal. So I went for the next best (large quantity of onion-using) thing - jam. It's a savoury jam, but still quite sweet. We've been eating it with cheese on crackers, on hamburgers, dotted over pizzas, and I'm gearing up to roast some tomatoes so we can make an onion and tomato tart - yum!

This recipe takes about 1.5 hours to make, so don't be in a hurry to go anywhere when you're making it. The onions are sweated down with rosemary, thyme and bay leaf, then slowly caramelised with vinegar, sugar and red wine until it's all thick and sticky.

savoury onion jam

This recipe made three smallish jars, and used about 10 onions. I've made a second batch since then, which was 1.5 times the recipe, and filled about 6 jars, so who knows how that works.

For those playing at home, this recipe came from here.

Would I make it again? Definitely. It's easy, though time consuming, and I'm not sure you could really screw it up - apart from maybe burning the bujesus out of it. I didn't think others would be quite as thrilled with this as I was, but I gave 2 of the jars away to friends and one lot was eaten within about 2 days - that's a pretty good compliment, I think!

Mojo

Afternoon all,

I thought it had been a while since my last post, and now I look, it was back in February. Not sure there are many readers, so I don't think you've missed me too much!

I've come to realise that my lack of desire to blog, or bake, or sew, or do much that is creative is either cause or effect of my state of mind, and lately it's been a little flat. I think I've lost my mojo, and I'd rather like to get it back.

I'm setting myself a challenge, and by putting it in writing, hope to be better at sticking to it. I'm going to do something at least once a week that is blog-worthy, and then actually blog about it. Doesn't sound so hard, does it? I'm hoping that the doing will lead to more wanting to do and I'll be able to spiral myself up, instead of further down.

Wish me luck. Hopefully you'll hear more from me soon.

Phew, it's been a while...

The break I've had from blogging has not been an accurate representation of the amount of cupcakes I've been baking, but rather, a discovery that I've found a few great recipes that I really like (vanilla bean, I'm looking at you...), and so I've made the same flavours over and over. While I don't mind baking the same thing, I'm fairly certain that anyone reading this probably wouldn't love seeing the same thing show up week after week.

See? I've still been baking...


There has been a lot going on here. Apart from Christmas and new year, G finished preschool, A turned one, E continues to astound us with both his ability to communicate and his flat-out naughtiness! We've had to rehome our giant dog, much to everyone's sadness, and we've been visiting family all over the place.

This year, G has started kindergarten at a brand new school, and 3 days in, he seems to be loving it. E is still in daycare a few days a week, so I actually have a little time to sit down and think. Hopefully this means I'll get to experiment with a few more yummy things.

I promise not to become one of those others that spends half a day packing an amazing looking lunch for her kid, just so she can put a picture on the Internet and make the rest of us feel bad, but... In an effort to keep both myself and G interested in the lunch box, now that we're doing this full time, I'm going to try to keep it a bit interesting. So far, sandwiches cut into varying shapes with cookie cutters is working quite well.

This lunch I packed for the week before school started, as we were practicing having 'lunch time' and 'morning tea time', rather than just grazing all day. The little man is dressed in G's school uniform!



I'll try to get more yum things done soon, but please forgive me if a lunchbox pops up on here every now and then.

By the way... Anyone got any good ideas for an almost-five-year-old's lunch?

"Hostess Cupcakes". Or "How The Internet Lied To Me"

It could well be a factor of the type of blogs that I ready, or websites that I visit, but according to my version of the Internet, EVERYONE is making hostess cupcakes. So when I put out the call out to my FB people, asking if the rumours of deliciousness were true, I was somewhat disappointed to hear that many of my American, or part-time/sometime Americans, had no real idea what I was talking about.
Some had heard of Hostess cupcakes (I think it's a brand, so it should probably get a caps), but most had not tried one, or hadn't eaten one since childhood...
So what to do? They look delicious (chocolate cake filled with creamy deliciousness, topped with ganache and swirly white icing). I decided to take the plunge.
Phase one: bake the cake. It's a pretty easy, but light, chocolate cake. They rise nicely, but sink in the middle as they cool. That's ok, since we're filling them with a piping bag.
Phase two: make a strange gooey, custardy filling. The recipe I was using was, obviously, American, and it called for the use of 'marshmallow cream'. It is a huge coincident that I spotted some in the shop as I was thinking of making these cakes. What an odd thing. It's sticky but incredibly light - a whole tub weighs less than 100grams.
That mixture is then placed into a piping bag, and squeezed into the centre of the cakes until the top becomes almost flat.




Phase three: make the ganache, and cover the cakes. This covers up the hole you made putting the filling in.




Phase four: make icing and pipe into swirls on top of the cakes. It was a cold day when I was making these, and my icing was pretty thick, so I couldn't manage the 7 swirls that are apparently required on a real Hostess Cupcake. In fact, I could hardly manage any swirls that looked any good, so I made it up as I went along.




Would I make them again? Maybe. They were pretty tasty, but a lot of effort for a cupcake. I think these might be special occasion cakes, or by request only. A good novelty cake, but probably only for people who've either heard of, or tried the real thing.
I'd be interested to try the original, boxed version. I'm sure they are one of those foods that last forever in the cupboard, unlike the homemade ones that are filled with real cream and eggs.
Credit where credit's due: these are from my favourite cookie blog, Bake at 350.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Proper good English and stuff

This is a very quick post just to let you know that I can speak English good. I just can't type it good (well I probably could, but only on an actual keyboard, not so much the iPad with its autocorrect-y goodness.

I DO know the different between your and you're. And there, they're and their.

I just read back over a few blog posts, and I'm appalled by the English. It could be multitasking to blame, it could be the iPad, or it could be the glass of wine I'm having while I post. Who can say.

I just want you all to know I'm not illiterate, I'm just unco and not very good at proofreading.

Please don't judge me.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Failure cakes and their redemption.

My niece Miss E has a bunch of allergies. Some have gone away as she's gotten older, and some are probably there for life, which is fairly sucky. Mostly it's not the end of the world, but it does mean that she can't have most cakes or biscuits. If I was a 3 year old girl, I'd be pretty disappointed if I couldn't have a piece of cake when it was my friend's birthday. Miss E's mum keeps a bunch of muffiny-cakey things in the freezer for situations just like that, but it's not the same when you get one thing while everyone else gets something different (and slathered in icing).

A while ago I decided to see if I could find a cupcake recipe, with icing, that was a passable substitute for the real thing. I found a website with rave reviews about the egg and dairy free cupcakes so I thought it was a good place to start. I even read the author's tips for making sure the cakes weren't too dense, which is a problem when you can't use egg as a binder.

I'm going to assume that things don't necessarily translate from US to Australian, even when I switch my scales to crazy US measurements. This was the result:



Not cool. Thank goodness for cupcake papers, or I think that the tins would have had to go in the bin. This recipe has so much sugar that the cake edges caramelised and stuck firmly to the tin.

I pressed on and made the icing anyway. It had that slightly weird flavour that Nuttelex has, but it was surprisingly good overall. I iced the least crappy cakes and sent them to school with M, who offered them to his colleagues without telling them they were egg and dairy free. Apparently they were fairly well received.

I put off experimenting with the recipe for a while, mostly so we could have cupcakes that we could eat without hacking them out of the tin. Then my sister asked me if I would make Miss E-appropriate cupcakes for the party that my mum was hosting for my sister's birthday. The plan was that all the food at the party would be ok for Miss E to eat.

Out came the mixer, and I decided to start with the same recipe, but without so much rising agent (SR flour, but no extra baking powder, for those of you that care...). My thinking was that maybe the cakes had risen nicely, but then sunk because there was nothing to support the cake structure. The scientician in me had to experiment, and it turned out, I was right. Check this out:


(also, I got a wanky photo app on my phone...)

Pretty pleased with that. It was too far away from the party for this to be the final batch, so I iced them and my boys thought they were pretty good - but honestly, if it's cake shaped, they'll eat it. They were slightly dense (the cakes, not the kids), but entirely passable in terms of flavour. It also meant that I had to try to replicate the outcome - yay for the scientific method!

The second batch worked just as well as the first, so that was lucky. I emailed my sister to find out what color icing she wanted... The "committee", consisting, one suspects, entirely of Miss E, voted for pink. What a surprise! A bit of pink sparkle dust, and some 'dusty rose' food coloring, and this was the result:



Not bad, huh?

And Miss E certainly seemed pleased!



Credit where credit's due: the recipe is from Sweet Rosie

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You know what I like? Cookie dough.

There, I've said it. And I know I'm not the only one. I bet most home bakers take more than just a little taste of the dough before the cookies are all rolled out. I don't really even mind what flavor dough it is. It my not-so-secret shame (or one of them, at least...)
Which brings us to this week's cupcake: chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes. Yum.




The process was astoundingly like making actual cookies. Brown sugar creamed with the butter somehow gives the batter a cookie flavour. The ini choc chips were supposed to be dark chocolate, but i couldn't find any at the shops, so I used milk chocolate. I think that may have been the reason that these were incredibly sweet.

The recipe called for a cookie dough filling too, but I didn't have any condensed milk (yeah, like I need more sweet stuff in this cake), so I just left it out.

The frosting - this is definitely not icing - is practically dough as well, with the cookie dough texture being provided by the flour in the mix. I added a bit more milk than I was supposed to because I thought the frosting was too thick and be pain to pipe. It still turned out tasty.

A few more mini choc chips on top, and these are a small child's dream.




Even as I crossed the room to take these pics, 4 year old G asked if I had cut the cake in half so I could share it with him. I guess that makes them a winner in his eyes, but for my money, they were a bit too sweet. I might just stick to eating real cookie dough when the occasion arises.

Credit where credit's due: the recipe is from TidyMom

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