Lemon syrup loaf

2 eggs
100g butter, melted
2 Tbsp grated lemon rind.
1 cup castor sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk

- Preheat oven to 180 deg C
- Beat eggs and butter
- Add lemon rind and sugar and mix until creamy
-  Mix in flour, salt, baking powder and milk
- Bake in a loaf tin for approx 45 mins or until golden
- While hot, pour over a mixture of 1/4c lemon juice and 1/4c sugar and leave to cool in tin

This was really good! I love lemon flavoured stuff, and I love how it went crispy on top from the lemon sugar poured over. My oven burnt it on one side which was a shame, but it was a hit at work anyway.

Caramel slice

BASE:
1.5c regular flour
1tsp baking powder
125g melted butter
1/2c brown sugar

Mix all together and press into a lined baking tin approx 15cmx30cm. Bake at 180 deg C for 10 mins.

TOPPING:
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2tbsp golden syrup (I used a bit extra)
1tbsp butter

Combine in a sauce pan, bring to the boil for approx 5 mins stirring constantly. Pour over baked base, a return to the oven for another 10 mins-15 mins until the centre is no longer liquidy.

ICING:
150g cooking chocolate
50g butter

Place butter and chocolate in a metal bowl. Boil water in a saucepan. Remove from heat and place the metal bowl firmly over the top. Do not let any water/steam get into the chocolate or it stiffens. Stir until chocolate is melted. Spread over the cooled filling.

Chill until chocolate is set then cut into slices using a warm knife. Store in a airtight container in the fridge.

This is REALLY hard to cut. I think I used a too small pan, resulting in a too thick base. Tom really loves it, I think it's too sweet... I don't usually like caramel slice anyway, it's the one thing in the world that I think is too sweet so no surprises there!

Sticky lemon slice

125g butter
1c flour
1/2c icing sugar
1c castor sugar
1/2c lemon juice
1tbsp grated lemon rind
1tbsp custard powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs

- Combine butter, flour and icing sugar in food processor until it looks like breadcrumbs
- Press into a lined baking tin and bake at 180 deg C for 15-20 mins until lightly golden
- Mix castor sugar, lemon rind & juice, custard powder, baking powder and eggs in food processor until well combines.
- Carefully pour over warm base and bake for a further 25mins until set
- When cool, dust with icing sugar and slice.

YUM! SO GOOD! Seriously, someone take it away before I eat it all.

Black forest brownie

200g melted butter
1 1/2 c sugar
1c cocoa
3 eggs
1/2c standard flour
200g block of black forest chocolate, chopped as finely as you can - I am lazy and impatient, and cut mine as below

- Preheat oven to 150deg C and grease a 20x20cm dish

- Use electric mixer to cream butter and sugar

- Add cocoa and beat for 3-5 mins until creamy

- Add eggs one at a time, beat well after each

- Sift in flour gradually

- Stir in chopped chocolate

- Bake for 1 hour. Brownie should appear cracked on the outside but the inside should appear undercooked. 

- Let it cool in the tin, then cut into squares and dust with icing sugar (optional, I think it tasted delicious without it)

Yum, just as delicious as the slice I had at work the other day! My favourite is when I get a mouthful with the little jellies. 

Choc-nut slice

Base:
1c self raising flour
2tbsp cocoa
1/2c castor sugar
2/3c shredded coconut
125g melted butter
1tsp vanilla
125g chopped nuts (I used walnuts)

- Preheat oven to 180 deg C
- Sift flour and cocoa into a large bowl. Stir in sugar and coconut.
- Add butter, vanilla and nuts and stir until well combined.
- Press mixture into a lined tin, approx 28x18cm, and take for 20 mins or until golden brown.
- Allow slice to cool thoroughly before removing from the tin and icing.

Icing:
1c icing sugar
1tbsp cocoa
15g melted butter
1.5-2tbsp milk
60g chopped nuts (I used hazelnuts)

- Sift icing sugar and cocoa into a mixing bowl and add melted butter and enough milk to make a smooth, spreadable icing.
- Spread evenly over the base (make sure it's cool!) and sprinkly the nuts over the top.
- Leave to set for approx 1 hour before serving.

This was delicious! This was possible my favourite thing that I have ever made (except banana cake, my eternal favourite). I LOVE hazelnuts, and walnuts, and peanuts.... you get the picture! Would definitely make this again!

Coconut slice

Base:
125g butter
100g sugar
1 egg
1 1/2c self-raising flour
Jam (raspberry, strawberry, blackberry etc. I used blackberry)

Topping:
1c coconut
1/2c sugar
1 egg
Juice of 1 lemon (I used vanilla essence)

Pre-heat oven to 170deg C
Mix butter, sugar, egg and flour until it forms a soft dough.
Press into a greased slice tin, approx 30cmx25cm - mine was smaller, therefore thicker slice.
Spread generously with jam.

Using the same bowl, mix ingredients for topping.
Cover base evenly with topping, the jam will show through.
Bake at 170deg C for 20mins or until lightly browned.

This. Was. Amazing.

We had eaten a quarter of it before the day was out. That's how good it was. A work-mate commented on my "Louise cake" but for some reason it just seemed different to how my flatmate used to make Louise Cake but I can't pinpoint the difference.. Not complaining though, maybe I'll try a Louise cake recipe next time...

Melting moments/yoyos

125g softened butter
3/4c plain flour
1/4c icing sugar
1/3c custard powder

- Preheat oven to 160deg C
- Use electric mixer to beat butter until creamy.
- Add dry ingredients and mix to combine.
- Using your hands, roll mixture into small balls (remember that you will be joining these in pairs, so the more the better!) and use a fork dusted in icing sugar to flatten these.
- Bake for 15mins or until very lightly browned.
- Let cool for 30 mins

60g softened butter
2/3c icing sugar
2tsp lemon rind
1tbsp lemon juice

- Beat butter and icing sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy
- Add lemon rind and and juice and beat until combined
- Spread icing over cookies and sandwich together

I'm not sure if this recipe is less-than-ideal or if my butter being melted instead of softened failed me. My cookies are alot flatter than melting moments should be, so next time I'll try only lightly softening the butter.

Chocolate mud cake

1 1/2c hot water
250g butter
200g dark cooking chocolate
1/4c cocoa
2c castor sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2tsp vanilla
1 1/2c self raising flour

- Preheat oven to 150deg C
- In a saucepan over low heat, melt butter, sugar, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla and water
- Let mixture cool then add eggs & flour. Mixture will still be runny
- Bake for 1 h 15 mins

Ice with whatever icing you want... This cake was EPIC! I have a huge sweet tooth and I could barely get through a slice the width of two of those kitkat fingers, it truly was chocolate mud cake- so rich! Definitely recommend this, and I especially like it before it doesn't have any unusual ingredients (e.g. buttermilk) like most mud cake recipes. Easy peasy! Mine was a bit lumpy though, possibly didn't melt the ingredients in the saucepan enough, or should have used the electric beater when I put the flour etc in. But it went down a treat, I just hope the birthday girl liked it!

Self-saucing caramel pudding

Batter:
60gm soft butter
3/4c castor sugar (I used normal sugar)
1/2c milk
1c self raising flour

Sauce:
15gm melted butter
3/4c brown sugar
3/4c boiling water

- Preheat oven to 180deg C
- Cream butter and sugar (batter), add milk and flour, and stir to combine.
- Place evenly in a greased medium sized oven dish
- In a microwave safe bowl, place sauce ingredients and stir to combine. Microwave for 2-3 minutes or until sugar and butter are both melted.
- Pour the sauce over the back of a spoon into the oven dish.
- Bake for 30-40 mins, stand for 10 mins before serving with whipped cream.

Swedish tea ring

 I made the dough in the breadmaker, with the following ingredients...
3t yeast
250g white flour
4T sugar
4T butter (60gm)
3T milk powder
1t salt
230ml water

-When dough is done, roll out flat to a 30cmx50cm square
-Brush over surface of dough with 2t melted butter
- Combine 2t cinnamon and 1/2c brown sugar and sprinkle over dough
- With the long edge towards you, roll into a log and twist log into a circle.
- Place on baking tray and slice into the ring, as below, and twist each segment slightly.

- Cover with plastic wrap and sit somewhere warm (30deg C) for 30 mins

- Brush with beaten egg, bake at 180deg C for 15-25 mins or until golden brown

Optional: ice with vanilla icing

Yum! Mine is still quite doughy, so I put it back in the oven for a little bit. Maybe I should have put it on fan bake, or maybe it's because I put it in the hot water cupboard for half an hour and then realised the cupboard wasn't warm... So I sat in the warm (but turned off) oven for 20 mins or so. But anyway, it tastes good, and I'll attempt it again in a few weeks and learn from my mistakes. 

Oreo & cream cheese truffles

1 packet of oreos
350gm cream cheese
1 packet of cooking chocolate (I used white chocolate buttons, made of cooking chocolate formula)

-Blend the oreos into fine crumbs
- Add cream cheese and stir/squash with the spoon until the mixture is moist, but firm.
- Melt the chocolate in the microwave
- Roll oreo mixture into balls, drop into the melted chocolate and fish it out with a spoon (saves the mess, trust me on this one!)
- Put onto a tray with baking paper, and refrigerate for at least a few hours

These are DELISH! I was addicted from the first bite. This is my second time making them now, and the first time was almost a disaster. The mixture was a bit too dry and falling apart in the white chocolate, and we ended up with a bowl of 60% white chocolate and 40% oreo remnants. So this time I learnt to make it moist, and use a spoon (well actually, the spoon was Tom's idea). Bring on morning tea tomorrow!

Chocolate fudge cake

5 medium eggs
2 cups of caster sugar
1½ cups of mayonnaise
2 ½ cups of plain flour
¾ cup of cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2/3 cup of tepid water

- Preheat oven to 145deg C or 125 deg C if on fan bake
- Use electric beater to mix eggs and sugar for the duration of 1 song, until ingredients are white and fluffy
- Mix in mayonnaise on low speed until well combined
- Sieve dry ingredients together and add to egg mix. Combine on low speed and gradually add water
- Pour into a greased 22cm cake tin, preferrably a spring loaded tin. Bake for 1 hour and 20 mins approx or until knife comes out clean 

I'm not a fan of regular chocolate cakes, it always has to be "brownie" or "fudge" or "mud". I'm also not afraid to have weird stuff in cakes (i.e. mayonnaise) because I once had a cake which had blended kidney beans instead of flour and it was AMAZING. So I'll try anything once. However it wasn't until the cake was in the oven and my brother-in-law asked whether the recipe called for whole egg mayonnaise or normal (I know NOTHING about mayonnaise!) that I began to doubt myself. And this was Tom's birthday cake, so it had to be nothing short of perfect. 

I am told the cake is definitely fudgey, and it also weighs a tonne! I iced with chocolate butter icing, 250gm butter at room temperature, 500g icing sugar and 3/4c cocoa. This icing doesn't completely harden, but it doesn't stay so liquidy either. 

I think it was a success, and I was assured you can't taste the mayo! 

Mini quiches

Today I wasn't baking for Tom because his mum left him some baking last weekend. I was a bit at a loss, because I always bake on a Sunday! But then I remembered we're having a morning tea at work tomorrow and thought to myself, 'Bugger it. Everyone always brings rice crackers, sausage rolls or timtams, I'm making quiches!' and off I went...

Thanks to kidspot.co.nz for the recipe!

3 sheets of puff pastry
5 eggs
2/3c milk
4 rashers of bacon, diced
1/2 onion, finely diced
1c grated cheese

Thaw pastry sheets for about 10 minutes before you start...

- Preheat oven to 180deg C and lightly grease 2x 12 hole muffin trays
- Cook bacon and onion until lightly browned
- Use a circle shaped cutter (or drinking glass) to cut 24 circles out of the pastry
- Place a teaspoon of bacon and onion in the bottom of the muffin tin, I also used 1/2tsp of tomato chutney
- Whisk the eggs and milk together and pour up to the level of the pastry
- Bake for 15-20 minutes until the egg has risen and pastry is golden

These were tasty, a total hit with my workmates! The chutney really makes these :) I froze them in half dozens to thaw when we have nothing for lunch on a weekend, what an easy treat!

Boysenberry & toblerone brownie

Thanks to Healthy Food Guide NZ for the recipe!

3 eggs, seperated
1c castor sugar
3/4c low fat vanilla yoghurt (I used Meadowfresh Live-Lite because I had it in the fridge, Vanilla Spice and Vanilla Toffee)
1 1/2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 1/4 c self-raising flour
3/4c cocoa powder
1/2c frozen berries (recipe used raspberries, I used boysenberries and cut them in half)
50g toblerone, cut the triangles in half

-  Preheat oven to 180 deg C, line a 30x20cm baking tin with baking paper
- Combine egg yolks, sugar, yoghurt and oil in a mixing bowl.
- Sift in flour and cocoa and mix well.
- In a seperate bowl beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.
- Fold in to the other mixing bowl (make sure you fold it in! Otherwise it takes ages for them to mix!)
- Pour mixture into the baking tin and spread evenly with berries and toblerone
- Bake for 20 mins or until skewer comes out clean
- Cool completely before removing from tin and slicing.

The texture is absolutely perfect - but more like cake than brownie (I may have over-baked it) - not as fantastic tasting on it's own as the last brownie I blogged about but the toblerone (I didn't get any berries on my slice) really completed it. Not too sweet, not moist or dry, but don't make this recipe unless you are putting stuff on top!

Low fat banana choc chip loaf

Baking on a Monday just feels so wrong. But I was away for the weekend, and Tom has no morning tea (because caramel popcorn and vege chips are too girly apparently!) so I thought I'd best use the bananas that I took from work so that I could bake with them.

• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup margarine, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup mashed bananas
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

- Preheat oven to 170 deg C

- Beat butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs water and banana and mix.

- Add flour, salt, soda and baking powder and stir to combine. Pour into a greased loaf tin.

- Bake for approx. 60 minutes until brown and pulling away from the edges.

Verdict - YUM! A bit heavier than I like my banana cake to be, but this is a loaf after all. I added the perfect amount of chocolate chips, not so many that your hands were covered in melted chocolate after eating it. And it lasted all week without going dry/mouldy! Success. 

Peanut butter choc chip shortbread

This morning's mission is shortbread. I've never even made regular stuff but instead of starting there (because a) I love a challenge and b) Tom doesn't fancy shortbread) I went straight for peanut butter.

Thanks to http://theviewfromthegreatisland.blogspot.co.nz for the recipe...

1/2c (approx 125g) of room temperature, unsalted butter

1/3c peanut butter

1/2tsp vanilla

1 1/4c all purpose flour

1/4c icing sugar

1/2tsp sea salt (which I just happened to have in the cupboard- who'd have thought?)

3/4c milk choc chips

- Cream butter and peanut butter. Add vanilla.

- In a seperate bowl, combine sugar, flour and salt. Add to wet ingredients and mix until just combined. (At this point, because I only started with 110gm butter I had to add a little more because it was just too crumbly)

- Stir in chocolate chips (I only used about 2/3 of what I had, and am leaving the rest to put on the top.

- Roll into a log (on grease proof paper). Wrap, and refrigerate for a few hours.

- Cut into short-bread style thick slices and bake for 12-14 minutes (presumably on 180 deg C)

I have used Pams dark compound chocolate drops, but the recipe does say MILK CHOCOLATE- apparently this is needed to complement the peanut butter... So I gave in and went and bought some Nestle milk choc drops to put on the top, and had a sneaky taste of the cookie dough before baking it, it tasted good. But I do think that the milk choc drops on top, which softened but didn't totally melt, really made the cookies. These are crisp and buttery (or peanut buttery!) like shortbread should be, and since I'm also not a huge shortbread fan I love the chocolate addition. I had them in the fridge for about 2 hours and they were perfect slicing texture (almost rock hard!) I LOVE THESE! Yum.

Pavlova!

Tonight I attempted the kiwi classic, the Pavlova. We're going to a pot luck dinner tomorrow night and I've watched my Mum make it twice now and convinced it's time to try it on my own.

2 egg whites

1 tsp corn flour

1 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2c castor sugar

4 tbsl boiling water

Preheat oven to 180 deg C

Combine all ingredients, beat with electric beater for 15 minutes. Pile onto a flat oven tray covered in non-stick baking paper. Smooth out and squash down until it is cake sized and shaped with as few "flicks" as possible. Bake for 10 minutes, then turn oven off and leave in oven for a further 60 minutes. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN.

Decorate with cream and seasonal fruit, and enjoy the taste of home-made pav! Yes, mine may be cracked a bit around the outside but at least she hasn't collapsed.

Tastes AMAZING! Was a hit at the pot-luck dinner :)

Subway cookies

Probably the yummiest cookies I've ever made.

2 eggs

225g butter

3/4c white sugar

3/4c brown sugar

2tsp vanilla

2 1/4c plain flour

1tsp baking soda

1tsp salt

2c chocolate chips (combination of white and dark, can use buttons)

-Preheat oven to 180deg C

-Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs, stir in vanilla.

-Combine flour, salt and soda. Stir into wet ingredients.

-Add choc chips.

-Place rounded spoonfuls on baking tray (make sure tray is cool, and not too close together)

-Bake for 8-10 mins until lightly brown on the edges. Don't over-bake!

-Let sit for 10 minutes before shifting them or they'll break.

These went down a treat with Tom and my flatmates, so much so that my flatmate who only ever bakes from a box even made them. Unfortunately it's easy to eat 2 or 3 at once so i don't recommend them for anyone on a diet! If you over cook them they're a bit too hard when they cool down so it can take a few tries before getting the perfect bake. Good luck!

Best Ever Chocolate Mud Cake

This really does live up to it's name! It's a bit trickier to make than a regular chocolate cake and definitely more time consuming. And until AFTER I made this cake I had no idea what buttermilk was or whether we could get it in this country- so for every 1 cup of buttermilk that you're meant to use, you can use 1 cup of regular milk and 1 tablespoon of either vinegar or lemon juice (and let it sit for 10 minutes before using it).

220g butter

220g dark chocolate

6tsp coffee

160ml water

480g castor sugar

7tsp vegetable oil

125g self raising flour

125g plain flour

50g cocoa

1/2tsp baking soda

4 large eggs

110ml buttermilk

-Preheat the oven to 160deg C

-Melt butter, choc, coffee and water in a saucepan. When combined, remove from heat.

-Sift together flours, cocoa, sugar and soda. Make a well in the middle.

-Whisk together eggs, oil and buttermilk. Pour the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and gently whisk.

-Pour wet mixture into the well in the dry ingredients. Mix well.

-Pour into greased cake tin (22cm round) and bake for approx 1h 45min. Leave in cake tin until completely cooled.

I put grated white chocolate on mine after using just a regular chocolate icing.

This was for Tom's birthday shout at work so I didn't get to try the cake- but there were no leftovers brought home which is a good sign! YUM!