12 Days of Christmas - Days 6 - 11

Another week of Christmas outfits! 
♩♪♫♬ 5 en-sem-bles, 4 sets of pearls, 3 festive frocks, 2 shimmery shoes and a bonus evening party dress (sung to the tune of "On the first day of Christmas")♩♪♫♬ 

Hmmm...that makes 11 days of Christmas gear...but no plan for a 12th...(yet)...

Happy Christmas!

12 Days of Christmas - Days 1 - 5

Last year I dressed for the Christmas season for a week, and found I had Christmas clothes to spare! So this year I decided to build up the with the festive feeling for the last two weeks of school.

Happy Christmas and roll on next week!

Another caramelised white chocolate dessert

Caramelised white chocolate mousse, served with a coffee crumble, banana ice cream and fresh passionfruit. I wondered how good each of those elements would be, but

Re-modelling: a skirt from a dress!

Not having posted anything textiles-related in a while, I thought I'd highlight a little project from last year. My sister was kind enough to buy a vintage dress for me but it just didn't look right, especially the bodice section but we both loved the sun-ray pleated skirt.

After deliberation and discussion, we hit on the idea of chopping the top off altogether and using the bottom section to make a skirt. And I'm so lucky - Sister C, such a clever sewer, did the hard work for me. It was decided it would be simplest to cut it above the waist seam to make use of the elasticated waist. So the raw edge was then overlocked and hand stitched to the elastic on the wrong side. The tie was already there so C made some rouleau loops (and if making them is not an old skill, it's an advanced one and I have never done them) to attach the tie to the skirt. 

 

In cooler weather I've worn it with cardies and boots, and in summer with a T-shirt and white "fashion sneakers" or sandals. It's been so easy to wear - a really successful example of upcycling/remodelling/transformation! What continues to amaze me are the lovely comments I get every time I wear it - thanks C! 

Raspberry, rhubarb and vanilla

(Sounds like a good name for a blog).
With family visiting, inspiration hit to make a nice dessert (it doesn't take much).

Vanilla icecream (made in my new icecream maker - yay), vanilla panna cotta, fresh raspberries in fresh raspberry sauce, raspberry jelly, poached rhubarb, toffee with freeze dried raspberry, and rhubarb jelly (made from the rhubarb poaching stock - just sugar, water and a dash of grenadine, but it was too good not to use!).

Plated up in the "spoon of this spoon of that" method that seems to be the thing of the moment.
Crunchy toffee, creamy panna cotta, cold smooth icecream, fresh raspberries, slightly tart rhubarb, the interesting texture of jelly, in fact quite the plate of contrasting textures and complementary flavours (well I think so...).

More Easter goodness

I decided to upcycle the old favourite rocky road easter egg with a version containing honeycomb, marshmallow, popcorn and toasted coconut. I'll think about including a chewy chocolate or coconut jelly perhaps, when I find a good recipe for those firm jelly sweets...

The honeycomb was great to make but just a little bit scary dealing with the hot toffee mixture. I got my recipe from the Darren Purchese book, Lamingtons & Lemon Tart, a good basic recipe containing honey, would you believe, and it was terrific. 200g sugar, 80ml liquid glucose and 40g honey dissolved in 2 Tb water in a saucepan over a medium heat. Then, without stirring, it boiled till just turning golden. Then quickly stirred in 2 tsp bicarb soda till it frothed up crazily. And poured it onto a glad-bake lined tray. Remember, it is SUPER HOT and will BURN as the temperature is well over 100°C.

 

Then came the homemade marshmallows, I had to tweak my recipe a bit to make the mixture a little firmer as the first time, the marshmallow broke up when it was mixed with the other ingredients.

To make them, place 3/4 C sugar and 1/4 C cold water and beat well, then add 1 tsp vanilla essence. Then add 1/4 C boiling water in which 3 tsp gelatine has been dissolved. And continue beating until super thick, then spread on a tray to about a 3cm thickness. When set cut into cubes and roll in cornflour.  Then combine 100g (half the batch) with 1 C popped popcorn and 2 Tb toasted coconut.

  

Add in 2 C of the broken up honeycomb.  I used 200g dark chocolate to make the easter egg shells. And melted 150g milk chocolate to mix through the ingredients to make the rocky road.

 

When filled, some white chocolate (75g) was drizzled over the top.

A hit with the kids at school. With the leftover popcorn, we made caramel popcorn and that was a definite winner. Popcorn is born for caramel popcorn!

Wow, how many sweets can be fit into one Easter season???

An easter egg nest

I was inspired by a cake with an easter egg nest when I was trawling the internet for easter treat ideas. So I got to baking!

The individual brownie cake, which was iced with chocolate ganache, is probably a bit small for the size of the nest but you get the idea.
Simply melt 60g dark chocolate and mix it through 20g vermicelli noodles. Many varieties of vermicelli or cellophane noodles are made of mung bean starch. Make sure to use 100% rice vermicelli as it will soften slightly with the chocolate. The non-rice ones remain tough and hard to chew!
Line a muffin or patty case pan with glad wrap and put the mixture into a nest shape and let them set.

 That quantity of mixture made four.

Once it was set, it was easy to peel them off the glad wrap, fill with mini candy eggs and decorate the top of the cakes.

  

Happy Easter!

Raspberry curd

And back to the sweet stuff!

Everyone's heard of lemon curd but it was in a delicious magazine late last year, that I first came upon a recipe for raspberry curd in a "Raspberry Curd Crepe Layer Cake", originally a Stephanie Alexander recipe.

Not for the faint-HEART-ed

At the farmer's market, I was scanning the choices available at the grass-fed, free-range beef stall, when the stall-holder must have noticed me look aghast at the tray with the beef heart. Now at $4 for an entire heart, it's clearly an economical cut, but he offered to GIVE it to me if I was prepared to cook it. I was in two minds but decided I was up for the challenge.
I did a lot of searching online for how best to cook it and the recipe that perhaps sounded the nicest was a Peruvian recipe called Anticuchos.
Probably quite luckily, I forgot to take a photo of the heart before I removed the outer fat and sinewy bits, which were really quite gross. So then I chopped it into thin pieces and marinated the meat in the mixture of garlic, red wine vinegar, chilli, paprika, cumin and oil.

The Roasted Yellow Capsicum sauce followed, and this was really smoky and delicious. Not bad going to use two whole BULBS of garlic all up: one for the meat marinade and one roasted that went into the sauce.

Back to the meat, instead of threading onto kebab skewers, I just pan-fried it in batches, quite quickly on a reasonably high heat. And served it on cauliflower rice (whizz up the raw cauliflower florets in a food processor, pile into a casserole and microwave for 5 minutes), with the sauce on top!

Now the taste was good, but you know, I don't think I'd go back. One friend was happy for a taster, and said it was delicious. But no one else seemed at all keen to come share it with me. So I got to enjoy it for several meals. And now I think I've had enough. Forever. And always. Cross my heart.... 

Caramelised white chocolate

I've been hearing about caramelised chocolate for a while so of course I wanted to see what the fuss was about. And I've always been a big fan of caramel...