Savoury Muffin Recipe

Last week I mentioned my love of kitchen gadgets. This extends from things like strawberry hullers through to gadgets like the Thermomix. I've been to several demos and I drool over a friend's machine everytime I visit. I even borrowed one for a week and loved every second of it. Unfortunately $2000 for a kitchen machine simply isn't in my budget at the moment, no matter how much I love it. Lucky for me I got given the next best thing for my birthday this year! A Kogan Thermoblend. There are several key differences from the Thermomix, including being belt driven, not having a reverse function and lacking in built scales. All that aside I love this machine. It is perfect until that mythical day when I can afford the real deal. Now like all members of the family she needed a name. Many of my possessions have names. My car is called Luna, my sewing machine is Betty. After much deliberation I settled on Dorris for the Thermoblend. So I would like to officially welcome Dorris to the family!

This week I decided to make some savoury muffins to use up leftovers from the fridge. I love muffins. Savoury, sweet it doesn't matter. Savoury muffins are a fabulous way to use up leftovers and create a healthy snack that you can eat on the go. I couldn't find my usual recipe and I wanted to try out Dorris so I decided to trial my own recipe. The great thing about this recipe is that you can mix it up by using the base batter, which stays the same, and add whatever extra ingredients you want or have on hand. These are great warm with a little butter. Delicious!

Savoury Muffins

Ingredients
Batter
2 cups SR flour (I used wholemeal)
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
125g butter
1 tsp salt
pepper to taste

Extras
200g cheese
1/2 red onion
handful sundried tomatoes
thyme

Method
Pre-heat oven to 180°C. Grease or line 12 whole muffin pan.
Place cubed cheese into bowl. Grate on for 30 seconds on speed 6. Set aside.
Place onion in bowl. Process for 10 seconds on speed 6. Set aside.
Place butter in bowl. Melt for 2 minutes on speed 4 at 60°C.
Add the rest of batter ingredients. Mix for 30 seconds on speed 6.
Scrape down sides of bowl.
Add cheese, onion, sundried tomato and thyme. Mix for 5 seconds on speed 5.
Give a quick mix with spatula to ensure extras are evenly mixed.
Spoon, evenly, into muffin pan.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden and skewer inserted comes out clean.

n.b. This recipe is for use in a thermo-style appliance. You could simply grate, chop, melt and mix the ingredients by hand.

My muffins simply used leftovers I had in the fridge. I think they would be super tasty with creamed corn, cheese and ham. Or maybe just a vege muffin with zucchini, carrot, mushrooms, peas, corn or anything really!

Thanks for stopping by. If you try out the recipe please let me know what you think and I would love to hear what ingredient combination you try!
Xxx

Crème Brûlée

I think I have over simplified my love of cooking and cookbooks. It goes beyond just books and recipes, although they are probably the biggest collection. I love kitchen shops. I love gadgets and doodads for the kitchen. I love fancy serving-ware, crockery, glasses and so on. I also love cooking shows. Lifestyle Food is one of my go to channels if I am stuck for something to watch, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and Nigella Lawson are some of my absolute favourites. I also love the cooking competitions like My Kitchen Rules, Masterchef, Great *insert country* Bake Off. You get the idea. I always feel inspired and awed after watching these shows. Sometimes I am awed by the skill and the creativity of the chefs and amateur cooks. Other times I find myself screaming at them because I can see the mistakes they are making.

This is a very realistic cartoon of how I watch cooking shows!

One dish in particular that I have always wanted to try, but have always been scared to because of the failures I have witness on these beloved shows, is crème brûlée. I mean what isn't there to love about that dessert? Smooth creamy custard with a caramelized crunchy top? Sounds like heaven to me. But too many times I have sat there and watched those amateur cooks scramble their desserts or have terrible flavour, or any other disaster you might expect in a cooking competition. Mum bought a cute little crème brûlée set with ramekins and a little blow torch many years ago so that we could attempt our own. However we have both been too nervous to actually try.

This week I decided it was time I got rid of those worries and made crème brûlée at last, I mean I will never know if it is as hard as it seems until I try will I? So I spent several days reading different recipes, hints and tips. I ended up flitting between two different recipes on Taste.com. After settling on these recipes and a trip to the supermarket for ingredients, I took a deep breath, donned my apron (did I mention I also love pretty aprons?!), laid out all my ingredients and set to work.

I was so scared of boiling the cream that it took longer than expected to reach the right temperature but I got there eventually. The next step was possibly the most nerve wracking as I knew the eggs could split and scramble if the cream mixture was too hot or I did not whisk fast enough. I took my time adding the cream mixture and whisked like my life depended on it! It looked fine at this point *breathe slight sigh of relief* but it still had to bake, set and be brûléed. When they came out of the oven I was able to breathe another slight sigh of relief, they wobbled! This gave me hope that they weren't vanilla flavoured scrambled eggs!

Finally it was time for the final step. The brûlée. I will admit it was fun to use the blow torch, something I had never done before. I used slightly too much sugar on the top of the first crème brûlée, so it took quite a bit to caramalize. But that was okay as I had one to spare. The next three came out wonderfully. Now all that was last was to plunge that spoon in and hope that the top cracked and the inner was delicious and creamy. Of course my mother felt the need to tease at this point. She was the first to crack into hers, she looked over at my while inspecting her spoonful and said with a completly straight face, 'Well Corinne do you want to know what happened?'. My heart dropped, I was sure I had failed. Then she cracked a smile, popped the spoon into her mouth and finished her sentence, 'The top cracked and it is smooth and creamy in the middle.'

Success! A little leap of joy, a whole lot of 'Mmmmmms', lots of bowl scraping and a very satisfied smile later, and I can now say that I have successfully cooked crème brûlée and they rocked!

You can find the recipes HERE and HERE.

As always thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment. Let me know if you try one of the recipes and what you thought. Until next Monday, see ya!

Upside Down Mango and Coconut Cake

Sorry for the late post this week folks. While I aim to cook my feast on a Friday or Saturday night so that I can have the post up to break up the Monday morning monotony for you, life of course can spoil the best laid plans.

Upside down mango and coconut cake.

For the last six weeks I have had the please of having my Nan visiting and staying with us. She lives 1000km away so when she visits (generally for 4 - 6 weeks twice a year) other things can get put on hold while I enjoy some time with her. I started this challenge while she was here and she has been awfully encouraging, as she is with everything her grandchildren strive to do. But as I said this week life got in the way of a perfectly timed blog post (haha).

Success on the Pandora front
with a new little doggy charm
for my birthday present to myself.

February is a month of birthdays in my family. I particularly like to refer to the first week of February as birthday week. My birthday (26 this year for those playing at home) falls on the 2nd, I'm closely followed by my cousin (the big 21 this year!!) on the 3rd and then Nan (it's impolite to ask a lady over the age of 21 how old she is so I won't tell you, but I will say we are getting ready to celebrate a milestone birthday next year!) on the 4th. Nan and I don't get to celebrate our birthdays together very often, so when we do it still feels like a big treat to me! 

I am trying to encourage myself to do this
properly by setting up a study space

As I said this year held a milestone birthday with my cousin's 21st. Well this meant a trip to Sydney on Friday night (roughly a 5 hour trip) to get Nan almost halfway home and celebrate the birthday. I love visiting the family in Sydney, sadly we don't see each other nearly enough and it always seems to be short visits. But it was a great weekend none the less, with a family lunch on Saturday for the birthday boy, a spot of shopping in the afternoon (I was desperate to hit a Pandora store as we only have a small selection locally), a BBQ Saturday night and then the drive home on Sunday. Which left little time for cooking and blogging, as you can imagine.

Just to add something else into the works, I started studying today. After a year of casual work and career apathy I decided to try something new. I'm feeling enthused to be studying again, it is something I really enjoy. I do however love a good study break! Which is where this weeks Feast comes in.

We have a mango tree in our yard, which this year has produced the biggest crop we have had since moving here. Unfortunately we hadn't had the chance to eat them and noticed today that they were nearing the end of their fresh life span. Enter the Upside Down Mango Coconut Cakes from SBS Food . I love the idea of upside down cakes but have never actually cooked one. This was a great recipe to use up our aging mangoes and a few other pantry staples.

I have to admit that I am not a pro mango slicer, in fact I'm pretty terrible but I managed to extract a decent amount of fruit with no injury to myself. I made a few substitutions to save myself a trip to the supermarket and use up some left overs. I had run out of self-raising flour last week half way through a mammoth cupcake baking endeavor and have so far forgotten to replace it so I used white plain flour and wholemeal self raising flour. I don't think this made a great deal of difference. I also used coconut cream instead of milk, as I had some sitting in the fridge. I counter balance this I added a few tablespoons of normal milk to add a bit more moisture. 

The cake did take longer to cook than stated in the recipe. When I tested the cake, at the 35 minute mark, the skewer came out clean however I felt that it did not look quite right and still had a wobble to it. I put it back in for another 10 minutes and am so glad I trusted my instincts. It came out golden, moist and delicious. I am sure it would have been gooey without that extra time. 

I was terrified to turn it out. What if I dropped it? What if it didn't work? What if it tasted horrible? What if? What if? What if?! But it came out beautifully! Served with a scoop of icecream it was scrumptious. I think this recipe may have given me a love of upside down cakes, so watch out for some more of those during the year!  

In case you missed the link you can find it HERE. If you try it out please let me know what you think.

Well thanks for stopping by and I'll see you again next Monday (hopefully!).

Spiral Vegetable Tart and Fruity Port Steaks

Well this week was the first week of the challenge. All week I had friends and family asking me when I was cooking, what I was cooking, when was I going to post about it. Being the first week I wanted to take my time and choose a recipe that I really, really, really wanted. I landed upon a recipe I had seen several months ago on Facebook for a spiral vegetable tart. I watched the video several times when I first came across it and have been dying to try is ever since. So I started trawling back through my posts trying to find the video I had shared. But unsurprisingly, if you know Facebook, it seemed to have been eaten and was never to be seen again. Luckily a quick Google search led me to the Food Republic website. I mean really it just looks amazing!

Now that I had decided on the tart, I had to choose a meat to accompany it. I decided to use meat that we had already purchased, so I set out to find a pork steak recipe to complement the rest of the meal. I settled on this fruity pork steak recipe from the BBC Good Food website. It sounded simple, but delicious.

I first ran into problems when I was shopping for ingredients for the tart. This was mainly my fault for trying to cook an Autumn or Winter dish on Summer! But I pushed ahead. I wasn't able to find the appropriate squash or carrots, instead I used regular carrots and added sweet potato in place of the squash.

I decided to speed up the process by using a mandolin slicer to slice the veges instead of a peeler. I have to say that this made the job of slicing all those veggies way less daunting.

I was worried about the coordination I would need to wrap the veggies into a neat spiral. But I found it far easier than I anticipated and was very happy with the results. Doesn't it look gorgeous! And it hadn't even been cooked yet!

Once the tart was in the oven (and yes I will admit that I checked every 5 minutes until it was ready!), it was time to start on the pork steaks. I liked the minimal amount of prep this recipe required. I took the time to slice the onion and apple before starting, so that once I started cooking everything moved smoothly.

From the moment the steak hit the pan the house smelt amazing. The smell of the Chinese five spice and pork was just mouth watering. I appreciated that it was a simple matter of adding each new ingredient at the right time. When it came to the glaze I had been unable to find red currant jelly, so I substituted raspberry jam. I think I was actually drooling from the smells by now.

Now all that was left was to pull the tart out of the oven and see how well it had cooked. It was stunning! My only criticism is how difficult the tart was to cut. I was worried that I was going to ruin the aesthetics when I was serving it. It was also very difficult to cut when eating. I do wonder if cooked for slightly longer, in a slightly cooler oven would have made the vegetables softer and easier to cut without over cooking the pastry. Or possibly blanching the vegetables before putting the tart together. The flavour however was divine! It was a huge hit and I will definitely be cooking it again.   

The pork was also a huge hit. The glaze was a bit runny, more like a sauce but the flavour was delicious! There were many 'Mmmmmmm's issuing from the family when they tasted it, and the plates were all scraped clean, as was the saucepan.

Overall I would call this week's feast a success! Both recipes will be added into my regular rotation and I would highly recommend them. 

In case you missed the links before you can find the vegetable tart recipe HERE, and the fruity pork steak recipe HERE.

Well that's it for this week, a GIANT thank you to everyone who has stopped by and please leave a comment. See you again next week!