birthday dessert ideas: red house recipes

Showing posts with label red house recipes. Show all posts

Showing posts with label red house recipes. Show all posts

Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

Melting fast!

A couple of Christmases ago, my daughter gave me an electric ice cream maker. On sweltering days like today (41 degrees C) it is a godsend.

For dessert tonight I made a very dark, very rich chocolate ice cream. With ingredients including 70% cocoa dark chocolate, cream and eggs (from our chooks), this ice cream is hardly a dieter's treat. Yet because it is so rich, one is inclined to eat less, so perhaps it is not quite so naughty after all.

This is a traditional ice cream made from an egg custard. You could adapt the recipe to make vanilla ice cream by eliminating the chocolate and adding a crushed vanilla pod to the milk and cream prior to heating.

Please note: this dessert needs to be planned ahead because the chocolate custard must chill fully before being churned in an ice cream maker. I recommend preparing the custard the day before churning, if possible. Also, depending on your ice cream maker, you may also need to freeze the metal bowl ahead of time.

Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

1 Cup (250 ml) milk

1 Cup (250 ml) cream

4 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

2 Tbsp cocoa, sifted

150 melted dark chocolate (I used 70% cocoa chocolate)

Whisk eggs, sugar and sifted cocoa together until well combined.
Combine milk and cream in a medium saucepan and heat to scalding point (very hot to the touch but not quite boiling).
Pour milk mixture into egg mixture a little at a time, whisking constantly.
Return mixture to the saucepan and heat gently, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickly coats the back of a wooden spoon. It is important not to let the custard boil as the eggs will curdle.
Gently stir in the melted chocolate.
Pour the finished chocolate custard into a bowl and refrigerate until well-chilled.
Churn in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.
If you don't have an electric ice cream maker, freeze the chocolate custard in a metal cake tin until nearly frozen, then transfer the custard into a bowl and beat with electric beaters until smooth. Freeze again until firm.

Turning Stale Bread into Something Tasty

At our red house any leftover crusts or stale scraps of bread are kept in the freezer. Whenever I need bread crumbs, I thaw out the scraps of bread then whiz them up in the food processor.

It may seem crazy to save scraps of bread when at most the money saved is only a few cents. I mean, it's not as if I can't afford to buy a box of commercial bread crumbs, should I so wish.

I save scraps of bread for a number of reasons:

It does save money, even if only a small amount.
It reduces waste, although I am sure our four chooks would happily eat any stale bread I gave them
Fresh breadcrumbs taste better and are better than commercial bread crumbs for some purposes, such as poultry stuffings

Home made bread crumbs can be used for anything for which you might ordinarily use commercial bread crumbs, such as:

Poultry stuffing
To extend burgers or rissoles
To crumb schnitzels or cutlets
Mixed with a little melted butter, to top gratins

Vintage cook books provide numerous ways to use up stale bread. In particular, some wonderful, old-fashioned desserts make a feature of stale bread, most notably summer pudding and bread-and-butter pudding. Desserts using fresh bread crumbs include many steamed puddings and apple strudel.

Tonight I made Apple Betty, a recipe found in my 1950 edition of the Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook. This recipe achieved the double purpose of using up stale bread and using up four apples that had come home uneaten in lunch boxes. Notes are inserted (see italics) where I made changes to the original recipe.

Apple Betty

3 cups sliced apples (I peeled mine, as well as slicing them)

1 1/2 cups soft bread crumbs

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

4 Tbsp butter, melted

3/4 cup water

Mix apples, 1 cup bread crumbs, brown sugar and cinnamon. Place in buttered baking dish (I used a corningware casserole) and pour melted butter and water over top. Mix remaining crumbs with a little extra butter (I added a little extra brown sugar and cinnamon) and sprinkle over top. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees F) 30 to 45 minutes (mine took 45 minutes using a fan-forced oven at 160 degrees C). Serve hot or cold with hard sauce (I served mine with home-made egg custard). Serves 6.

Food Processor Hollandaise Sauce

Having heard horror stories about the trickiness of hollandaise sauce, its tendency to split if the cook doesn't stand over it anxiously whisking for dear life, I went most of my life without ever attempting to make it. That is, until I discovered that hollandaise sauce can be made quickly and easily in a food processor.

The beauty of a hollandaise sauce is that it can turn the simplest of meals - grilled salmon or steamed asparagus or poached eggs - into a luxurious feast. And although full of butter and egg yolks, you only need a couple of spoonfuls, so it's not quite the nutritionist's nightmare it may appear.

One warning: This sauce uses raw egg yolks, so please ensure that you use carefully-raised and fresh eggs. Ours come from the chooks in our back yard.

Food Processor Hollandaise Sauce

4 egg yolks
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp lemon juice (I used lime juice from my Tahitian lime tree)
175g (6oz) melted butter (mine was warm but not hot)

Blend egg yolks, water and juice in a food processor. With the motor running pour in the melted butter in a thin stream. The sauce will thicken and become pale yellow and glossy.

A Very Local Pumpkin Salad

Once a month I attend a food swap at a local park. People bring food they have grown in their gardens, we lay it all out on a table, then everybody takes what they want.

This salad was a result of the March swap. Every ingredient apart from the feta, garlic, olive oil (which was South Australian), salt and pepper either came from my garden or from a backyard within a few hundred metres of my home.

The salad was utterly delicious.

Pumpkin and Feta salad

Pumpkin (diced, massaged with olive oil and roasted on an oven tray for 30 minutes)
A few cloves garlic (roast in their skins with the pumpkin, then squeeze out into the salad)
Capsicum (chargrilled, then peeled and sliced)
Eggplant (sliced thinly then fried or grilled)
Rocket
Spring onions (diced)

The above ingredients were combined with a salad dressing made from a dash of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Pumpkin Scones

Inspired by my backyard pumpkin glut, this week I made pumpkin scones for the first time in several years. The scones were a hit, especially when served dripping in butter and golden syrup.

The beauty of pumpkin scones is that they don't really taste of pumpkin, which means my kids will eat them. Especially when I don't actually tell the said kids that the scones they are eating have pumpkin in them.

The recipe I use comes from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, 1996. I previously published the recipe here, although this time I made small individual scones rather that a large round cut in wedges.

Saturday Pizza Night

Saturday night is often pizza night at our red house.

I make a double quantity of a simple pizza dough and roll it out to fit two large rectangular trays.

Usually I make a vegetarian pizza and one with some kind of meat, such as bacon or ham.

Last night the vegetarian pizza was topped with caramelised onion and garlic; tomatoes, grilled squash, silverbeet and basil from the garden; and some pre-cooked slices of potato. The other pizza had bacon, ham, caramelised onion and tomato.

If I don't have mozzarella cheese on hand I grate a little of whatever cheese I have. Last night I used colby. Then it was into a very hot oven for 12-15 minutes.

The advantage of home-made pizza is that it is cheap and you can control the quality of toppings and the amount of cheese used, leading to a healthier meal. And home-made pizza tastes really good.

Home-Made Mint Sauce

Mint sauce is the perfect accompaniment for roast lamb. And mint sauce is easy, quick and economical to make, especially if you have fresh mint in your backyard or in a pot.

Mint Sauce

1 Tbsp boiling water

2 Tbsp sugar

2 Tbsp finely chopped mint (I use spearmint)

2 Tbsp white vinegar

Dissolve sugar in water over a low heat or in the microwave. Stir in mint and vinegar. Cool before serving.

An Old-Fashioned Orange Cake Recipe

I can't make my usual flourless orange and almond cake at the moment because the blade for my food processor disappeared about a week ago.

Having conducted an exhaustive but unsuccessful search, we suspect that the blade went in the bin when a certain teenage son was cleaning out the food processor.

Faced with no food processor but lots of oranges on our tree, I have begun to make an old-fashioned orange cake from Everylady's Cook-Book (1925). This book was a favourite of my grandmother, who bought a copy not long after she married in 1936.

Like many vintage recipes, the instructions are endearingly brief and require the reader to know how to mix ingredients together correctly (cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs, stir in sifted dry ingredients alternately with orange juice). I make this cake in a greased loaf tin and it takes 35-40 minutes to cook in a moderate oven.

The "King" Orange Cake - Type 1
Expensive. Delicious. Needs careful baking. But is well worth it.

2 eggs, their weight in sugar, butter and flour (with an extra tablespoon of flour), 1/4 teaspoon carbonate of soda, 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1/2 teaspoonful grated orange rind in the flour, orange juice, about 1 tablespoonful.

Icing: 1 tablespoonful of orange juice with sufficient icing sugar to make it like thick cream. Spread on the cake when nearly cold. Bake cake in a shallow tin; will keep moist indefinitely.

Dark Chocolate Mousse

This mousse recipe is a dark chocolate lover's delight. It is sinfully rich and not very sweet.

Dark Chocolate Mousse (serves 6)

200g (7oz) dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa) + extra for shaving

30g (1oz) unsalted butter

3 eggs, separated

300ml (1/2 pint) cream, whipped + extra for decoration

Melt chocolate and butter together in a double saucepan or microwave. Remove from heat and stir in egg yolks. Cool to room temperature.

Beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the beaten egg whites in two batches.

Divide mousse into 6 serving dishes (or pour into one larger dish) and refrigerate until set. Serve decorated with whipped cream and shaved chocolate.

Healthy Chocolate Fudge Balls

Today I made chocolate fudge balls using this recipe, and they are delicious and incredibly simple to make.

You combine nuts, dates, cocoa and vanilla in a food processor, whiz the ingredients, then roll the mixture into little balls.

I did make a few changes: I used raw almonds* instead of walnuts and added a little water as my mixture was very dry (the dates had been in my pantry for quite a while).

As a quick-to-prepare, healthy and tasty snack these chocolatey little balls are a winner.

*I often use raw almonds in my recipes because I can buy them loose at my supermarket - I bring them home in my own bag. Also, I know the almonds I buy to be Australian (and often South Australian), whereas other nuts are often imported.

Bircher Muesli

My favourite breakfast at the moment is bircher muesli. It's healthy, high in calcium and fibre, and can be made days in advance.

I usually double the recipe below and it last me about a week - it's great on work mornings when I have to eat quickly and rush out the door.

Kate's Bircher Muesli

500ml plain, unsweetened yogurt
1 cup rolled oats
1 tbsp honey (or to taste)
2 apples, grated, with the skin left on
handful of nuts (I use raw almonds)
handful of dried fruit (I use sultanas)

Combine all ingredients in a covered dish and refrigerate overnight.

Serving suggestions: Top with stewed fruit or fresh fruit such as banana slices or berries. Drizzle with a little extra honey.

This quantity serves 4 people.

Homemade Furniture Cream

Over the years I have experimented with a number of home-made cleaning products. One that I rather like is this recipe for beeswax furniture cream.

I haven't used the cream a great deal because I rarely seem to get around to polishing my wooden furniture, but should the urge strike, I have an enormous amount ready to go.

This recipe comes from How to Clean Practically Anything.

Beeswax Furniture Cream

125 ml (1/2 C) water
2 tbsp pure soap flakes
125 g (4 oz) natural beeswax
2 C turpentine
2-3 drops lemon pure essential oil

Put the water in a saucepan, add the soap flakes and heat over a low flame. When dissolved set aside to cool. melt the beeswax in a double saucepan over boiling water. remove from the heat and beat in the water and soap flake mixture. Cool a little before blending in the turpentine. Beat together until smooth. Pour into a wide-mouthed jar or container and cover with an airtight lid.

Use on sealed or polished wood furniture. Apply with a soft lint-free cloth. Polish afterwards with a soft dry lint-free cloth.

Three Fruit Marmalade

Last week I made an enormous double batch of three fruit marmalade - 16 jars. This quantity should last us at least a year as well as providing gifts for any of my marmalade-loving friends.

Three fruit marmalade is probably my favourite kind of marmalade because it doesn't taste too sweet.

I modify the recipe below slightly by slicing the lemon finely and cooking it along with the orange and grapefruit. I don't juice the lemon and I don't remove the lemon skins after soaking as the recipe suggests.

For all my jam-making I re-use jars saved from other products. You can read an earlier post on saving and sterilising jars here.

This marmalade recipe comes from the Australian Women's Weekly Cookbook, 1970.

Three Fruit Marmalade
1 large orange
1 large grapefruit
1 large lemon
3 1/4 pints (1.95 L) water
sugar (approx. 4 1/2 pounds/2kg sugar)

Wash fruit, slice orange and grapefruit finely; using skin, pith and flesh; discard seeds. Roll lemon well with the palm of the hand until skin is soft, halve lemon and extract juice, discard seeds. Place fruit (including the lemon halves) into large saucepan with the water, cover, bring to the boil, add lemon juice, simmer 30 minutes, cool. Pour mixture into large crockery basin, cover, stand 36 hours.

Remove lemon skins, measure fruit mixture, allow 1 cup sugar to each cup of fruit mixture, add extra 1 cup of sugar. Heat fruit mixture, add warmed sugar, stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat, boil rapidly until marmalade jells when tested on a cold saucer, approximately 30 minutes. Allow to stand 5 minutes before pouring into hot sterilised jars, seal.

Citrussy Goodness

Flourless orange and almond cake glazed with home-made marmalade

Home-grown Emperor mandarin

Lemon butter (with child scraping out the saucepan behind!)

Winter in South Australia is citrus season, and it seems just about every backyard has a glut of something.

Adding to the fruit from my own mandarin and orange trees, I have also been given grapefruit and lemons this week.

All this citrussy goodness has led to a burst of productivity. Earlier in the week I made 16 jars of three-fruit marmalade out of lemons, oranges and grapefruit, and three jars of fruit mince that included home-made candied lemon peel. Today I made a few jars of lemon butter and tonight's dessert is a flourless orange and almond cake.

It is a lovely feeling to line my cellar and pantry shelves with home-made preserves, and I feel very fortunate to live in such a bountiful part of the world.

Thrifty Tip #16: Plan Your Menus

When I recently asked a group of friends for ideas for thrifty tips, they were almost unanimous in suggesting menu planning.

One man said that his family rotates through a set three-week menu plan. Someone else said that she organises her menus by ingredient, for example, Monday - beef, Tuesday - chicken, Wednesday - pork.

Way back in 2008 I wrote a very detailed post about menu-planning, which I won't repeat here.

Reading that post after four years I was amazed at how organised I was back then. Probably the biggest change between then and now is that I use recipes less now and 'wing it' more. My menu planning these days is more spontaneous because I now have a better understanding of seasonality and flavour combinations (which is a polite way of saying that I've grown lazier).

I often plan what I'll cook as I go around the supermarket aisles, with only a general plan written out beforehand. When I get home I jot down what I intend to make during the week, based on what I have just purchased. I know that is not really menu planning, but it is working for me at the moment.

Do you plan your weekly menus? How do you go about it?

This post is part of my series, Thirty Days of Thrifty Tips.

Thrifty Tip #13: Preserve Your Excess

Oranges soaking for marmalade

Just about everyone who has ever grown their own fruit or vegetables will have experienced a glut at one time or another.

In days gone by, gluts were seen as an opportunity as they provided excess food that could be preserved for the winter or for any time when the fruit or vegetable in question was not in season. Tomatoes were dried or turned into tomato sauce, citrus fruit became marmalade, and apples were bottled and dried for future apple pies or crumbles. Indeed, nothing gives a greater feeling of abundance than rows of preserves on a kitchen or cellar shelf.

Knowing how to preserve season produce can also be of benefit when seasonal fruit and vegetables are cheap at the greengrocer or supermarket.

My own attempts at preserving include the following:

lemons into lemon curd
peaches into peach jam
basil into basil pesto and rocket (arugula) into rocket pesto
bottled horseradish
oranges into sweet orange jam
plums into plum jam
oranges and apples into apple and orange jam
oranges, lemons and grapefruit into three fruit marmalade

Recently I made and bottled spiced quinces from an abandoned tree and produced an enormous amount of grape jelly from a friend's vines. At various times I have also blanched and frozen various beans from the garden but freezing is not my preferred method of preservation because I don't have much freezer space.

I don't have any special jars or equipment for preserving. Instead, I save jars that have held other things and reuse them.

One of the best places for finding recipes for preserves is vintage or country cookbooks. However, the internet is also a wonderful resource; just google the ingredient you would like to preserve.

Have you ever bottled, dried, turned into jam or chutney, or otherwise preserved, season produce?

This post is part of my series, Thirty Days of Thrifty Tips.

Thrifty Tip #10: Make Your Own Cleaning Products

Making home-made cleaning products can be a great way to save money, and, as with food, if we make them ourselves there are no hidden ingredients.

The simplest, most economical cleaners of all are baking (bicarbonate) soda and plain white vinegar. If you google these ingredients you will find numerous websites with tips for their use. My friend Lisa does all her household cleaning with a spray bottle of white vinegar and she says it works a treat.

At various times in the five years I've been blogging I've published recipes for cleaning products including laundry powder, spray and wipe cleaner, furniture cream and glass cleaner. I've also made several batches of coconut and olive oil soap. One of the beauties of home-made products is that we can add essential oils to suit our personal preferences, or, alternatively, we can leave them unscented.

While I do use some commercial cleaning products - for example, in my opinion there is no home-made dishwasher detergent that is as effective as a good commercial product - I often use home-made cleaners as well. Indeed, having written this post I think I should start using home-made cleaners more than I have been lately!

Do you use any home-made cleaners? What do you recommend? And are there any that you don't recommend?

This post is part of my series, Thirty Days of Thrifty Tips.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme Stuffing for Roast Chicken

Nearly every Sunday I roast a chicken for our dinner. And I almost always make the same parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme stuffing.

It's really easy. I collect a handful of parsley, a few sage leaves and a little thyme and rosemary from the garden then whiz them around in the food processor. Sometimes I add a little lemon zest or a few onion greens or garlic scapes. Some diced bacon or ham would be good too.

I then add a few bread crusts or leftover, dried out bits of bread and whiz them with the herbs (I keep bread ends in the freezer for this purpose). A sprinkle of salt and pepper and the stuffing is ready to be stuffed into the cavity of the bird.

Home made stuffing is much nicer and more economical than the mixes you can buy at the supermarket. And the added bonus is that you know everything that's in it.

Maggie Beer Inspired Creme Caramel

(This post is dedicated to Ymke, who asked for the recipe a month ago, and Fiona, who reminded me this morning that I haven't blogged in a long time!)

Creme caramel is my favourite dessert to make at the moment - primarily because it is my favourite to eat. I adore it. When I was a child, my mother would sometimes buy those little plastic tubs of creme caramel, which I thought were delicious, but home-made creme caramel is much nicer - and surprisingly easy to make.

In Maggie's Harvest, Maggie Beer recommends that the caramel be cooked almost to the point of burning. However, I find this too strong and take the caramel off the heat earlier, when it's medium brown rather than dark brown.

The recipe I am sharing is inspired by Maggie's, although I cheat by using pure vanilla extract rather than a vanilla bean. Also, I use a 20cm round cake tin rather than small pots.

Creme Caramel (inspired by Maggie Beer)
125g (1/2 C) sugar
125ml (1/2 C) water
-
4 eggs
125g (1/2 C) caster sugar
250ml cream
300ml milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Caramel
Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan and heat until sugar is dissolved and mixture begins to boil. Continue to heat until the caramel becomes a medium brown colour - it will change quickly so watch carefully. Pour the hot caramel into a round cake tin and swirl around the edges. Do this quickly as the caramel becomes hard very rapidly.

Custard
Preheat oven to moderate (180C/350F, slightly less if your oven is fan forced.) Fill and boil your kettle. Put the caramel-lined cake tin in a baking dish.

Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract together. Heat the milk and cream together until almost boiling. Slowly tip the hot milk and cream into the egg mixture, whisking constantly.

Now pour the custard mixture into your cake tin and put the baking dish (with the cake tin inside) into the oven, with the oven door open. Next pour the boiling water into the baking dish so it comes about halfway up the sides of the cake tin - you could do this step before you put the baking dish in the oven but then you would have a very heavy dish to carry.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until set. Allow to cool in the water-bath, then refrigerate over night. Run a knife around the edge before turning out onto a plate.

I find this quantity serves eight people easily.

Plum Jam

Last weekend I harvested the plums on the satsuma plum tree that I planted in the winter of 2009. Although the plums were smaller than those on a more mature tree, they were too heavy for the thin branches of such a young tree. Some of the poor little branches were nearly touching the ground.

When I weighed the fruit it came to just under 1 1/2 kilos, which was a perfect amount for making a few jars of plum jam.

This recipe comes from The Australian Women's Weekly Cookbook (1970). It is given as written in the cookbook apart from the measurements, where I have given metric as well as the original imperial. This quantity made about 5 1/2 jars.

Plum Jam

3lb (1.4 kg) plums

3/4 pint (450 ml) water

2 1/2 lb (1.3 kg) sugar

juice half lemon

Wash plums, cut in half, remove stones. Place in large saucepan with the water and 3/4lb sugar. Cook gently until plums are tender, stirring occasionally. Add remaining sugar, stir over low heat until sugar dissolves; add lemon juice. Boil rapidly until jam jells when tested on a cold saucer, (approximately 1 hour). Pour into hot sterilised jars, seal.