Banana and Date Scones

Legend has it that this week is International Scone Week. With two very ripe bananas in the freezer, what better opportunity than to give my mother-in-law's Banana and Date Scone recipe a go? I haven't had much success in the past making scones, and find the lemonade version much more foolproof than the traditional recipe, but think I may have gotten a bit of technique sorted in my last couple of attempts, with help from my food processor.

Here's the recipe, as my mother-in-law defines it, with not quite exact measurements. I think it takes a bit of experience and observation to gague just how much of the flour and milk to add. I replaced plain SR flour with wholemeal and found it worked just as well.

• 40g butter, cubed
• 2 cups plus a bit of wholemeal SR flour
• 1 large or 2 small mashed bananas
• 1/2 cup chopped dates
• pinch ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup milk (or as much as you need to bring dough together)

1. Preheat a fan forced oven to 220C. Lightly grease the holes of a 12-hole muffin tray.
2. Mix butter and flour on low speed in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Alternatively rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips.
3. Transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl. Add the mashed banana, dates, cinnamon and almost all of the milk. Slice through the mixture with a butter knife until just combined, adding more milk if necessary to bring dough together.
4. With floured hands, turn dough onto a smooth surface and break gently into 12 even pieces. Place one piece into each hole of the muffin tray. I prefer this technique over cutting the dough into rounds as I find it removes some of the handling which can toughen the dough.
5.  Bake for 10-15 minutes or until slightly browned. 

These are a tasty, healthy snack that are best eaten warm, with or without a little butter. As with all scones, they are best eaten the day they are baked, but if you find you have leftovers at the end of the day, they freeze well. Thirty seconds each in the microwave is all they need to defrost. Happy International Scone Week!

In My Kitchen - August 2012

I've been spending a bit of time in my kitchen lately, since nausea seems to be giving me a break and my appetite has returned to normal (if anything I'm a little more ravenous than usual!). I've even been getting a bit more creative with dinners, cooking spinach & ricotta cannelloni, tuna mornay and spinach & egg pie this week, none of which have appeared in my kitchen for many months. Unfortunately I don't have any new toys in my kitchen this month, but I do have a few other things of interest.

In my kitchen are some whole macadamia nuts, in their shells. My sister-in-law recently went "down south" and brought these back for me, amongst a few other little goodies. For the non-West Aussie readers, "down south" refers to the south west region of Western Australia. These macadamias are the hardest nuts I've ever tried to crack. We broke our nut crackers on the first one and have since resorted to a vice and hammer. They kind of make you burn the calories before consuming them.

 

In my kitchen is a batch of (slightly overcooked thanks to baby brain) Breakfast Muffins, ready to share with a local community group I go to. There are often lots of evil tasty treats brought for morning tea, so I thought I'd be the healthy contingent this month. Next time I might take some decadent Mocha Bars to even things out.

In my kitchen (in my freezer to be precise) is a batch of Nigel Slater's Apple Icecream. I watched him make caramelised apples with this icecream on the TV a few days ago, and while I've never made icecream and don't own an icecream maker, this looked too easy not to try. And it was incredibly easy, using ready-made pouring custard. The end result basically tastes like frozen custard with apples (which it is). It's a pleasant change from the shop-bought chocolate icecream that normally resides in my freezer.I might have to make some sort of pudding tonight to go with it.

In my kitchen is a copy of The Edible Balcony by Indira Naidoo. This was a birthday present from hubby. I turned 30 while we were on the road (What was that? I don't look a day over 25? You are too kind!), and he managed to sneak the girls off shopping, buy me this together with a book about running, and hide them in the camper trailer until my birthday. Needless to say the books got a little scratched and stained by red dirt, but I was none the less impressed with his efforts. Naidoo has some great tips and ideas about gardening in small spaces, and the book is packed with lots of fun recipes too.

Other than being a mess from my renewed interest in cooking and baking, nothing else noteworthy can be found in my kitchen this month. I have grand ideas about baking bread and flavoured scrolls this afternoon, but I suspect sleepiness and dinner preparation may stand in my way. Maybe tomorrow...

Check out what's happening in some other kitchens this month by following the links at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial. 

A Mocha Bar Variation

Yesterday, Celia from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial posted a recipe for Mocha Bars. These little pieces of heaven are what I would call a brownie-biscotti hybrid. The shape and crisp outer gives the illusion of biscotti, but the decadent, soft interior reminds me of a good brownie. Needless to say, the recipe was so inviting I gave it a go as soon as I'd read it. Here's my adapted recipe, utilising ingredients I had on hand.

• 125g (½ cup) unsalted butter
• 55g (½ cup) raw (natural) cocoa powder
• 3 large eggs
• 150g (¾ cup) raw sugar
• 100g (½ cup) soft brown sugar
• 20ml (4 teaspoons) vanilla extract
• 40ml (8 teaspoons) strongly brewed black instant coffee
• 375g (2½ cups) plain flour
• 1½ teaspoons baking powder, sifted
• pinch of salt
• 180g milk chocolate chips (I used Callebaut 34%)
• 180g dark chocolate chips (I used Callebaut 54%)
• 100g slivered almonds

The original recipe called for Tia Maria, but I didn't have any, nor a desire to buy any so I used coffee. I really could have percolated some but I was lazy so went with instant. I also replaced some of the chocolate chips for almonds, so remove a little of the guilt.

I followed Celia's baking procedure, and the one log that I baked barely cooled before being devoured. Thank goodness I froze the other 3!

Tangerine Custard Cake

"Hey remember that month when I only ate boxes of tangerines. So cheap and juicy!" - Regina Spektor

Good friends of ours, Craig and Kristen, have a very fruitful tangerine tree in their back yard. Their recent harvest saw in excess of 300 edible fruit, about 30 of which made it to my kitchen on the weekend. So what do you do when life throws you tangerines? Drink copious amounts of tangerine juice to ward of the winter cold demons, and then make a Tangerine Custard Cake.

I adapted this recipe from the Orange Custard Cake recipe in my ever-faithful Golden Circle copy of Cooking: a common sense guide. I used my food processor because....well why not? The original recipe called for more traditional techniques like rubbing butter into flour with fingertips, but with my barely-used new food processor sitting there staring at me, I had to give it a go.Here's the recipe as I made it this morning.

2 cups (250g) self-raising flour
1/3 cup (40g) custard powder
80g butter, chopped
1 cup (255g) caster sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp finely grated tangerine rind
1 cup (250ml) tangerine juice

Cream Cheese Icing
125g cream cheese, softened
3 tbsp icing sugar
2 tbsp tangerine juice

1. Preheat fan forced oven to 180C. Line a cake tin with baking paper (I used a 20cm x 20cm square tin but if I owned a bundt tin I definitely would have used that.
2. Sift flour and custard powder into the large bucket of a food processor. Add chopped butter and process until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs.
3. Add the eggs, tangerine juice and rind and process on low speed until smooth.
4. Pour/scrape batter into cake tin and bake for 35 mins or until a skewer comes out just clean (keep an eye on it in the last 10 minutes to avoid over-cooking).
5. When the cake is completely cook, mix together the cream cheese, icing sugar and 2 tbsp of tangerine juice. The quantities may be a bit out, I just kept adding a bit more icing sugar and a bit more juice until I liked the taste. Spread icing over the top of the cake.

The tangerine juice makes this cake lovely and moist (providing you don't over-cook it), and the custard powder seems to give it a silky texture. 

If anyone has any tried and tested tangerine recipes, please pass them on. Now that I'm starting to feel a little more human as I bid the first trimester farewell, my appetite is encompassing things other than hot chips and Ribena. Hopefully my kitchen will start getting a bit more love and attention, and my family a more interesting range of dishes.

In the Garden - July 2012

While we were off galavanting the country, our garden took a bit of neglect. We had people caring for the animals, and picking any produce that was ready while we were away but we had our reticulation turned off so relied solely on rainfall to water the garden. Perth experienced some crazy storms in June which provided a lot of water, but also destroyed one of our Eucalypts (and at the same time sent out trampoline for a visit over the neighbours' fence). Here is what remains of the tree.

There were some pleasant surprises in the garden on our return too. The chicken run is about half covered by a passionfruit vine which we only planted late last year. The vine has grown prolifically and is now sporting quite a number of fruit. These passionfruit don't go purple, rather turn a yellow colour and have almost orange pulp. We tasted the first ripe one today.

Loretta (the lemon tree) has also come up with the goods this year, after around seven years of dormancy. She gave us one lemon last year, her first fruit, and we were pleasantly surprised to return home and find she has five fruit growing.

Larry (the patio lime) is also oozing with life this season. He is sprouting blossom everywhere so hopefully he'll be a very healthy litte tree and might even bear some fruit.

Given none of the chickens are laying at the moment (I suspect two of the four cochins are roosters), I've given them another important job - preparing the rear vege garden for sowing. They're doing a great job of weeding, turning and fertilising.

 The front vege garden is also coming along nicely. We edged it with old railway sleepers and Hubby has just finished the reticulation for it, adding a zone to our bore retic just for the vege gardens (which were previously watered manually via mains water). Once the chickens have done their job, I can start planting!

As one of my favourite Australian bands, The Waifs, say: "everytime you water the garden, you also water the weeds". Here is one of those weeds that is just too pretty not to photograph. I think I snapped this shot about half a second before Chicky plucked it from its stem, sending seeds everywhere. What can you do?

I have to say I was very pleased with the garden after 10 weeks of neglect. Nature never ceases to surprise. I'd love to hear what's going on in your garden this Winter (or Summer, if you're on the warmer half of the planet right now).

The rebirth...

So I thought I owed everyone a bit of an explanation about going MIA lately. While the gypsy getaway did get busy and exciting and lacking in internet access for the most part, something else happened on the trip that stripped me of all ability and desire to grow, bake, run, blog and well anything for that matter. I fell pregnant with number 3. Normally this wouldn't be too much of an issue, other than a little morning sickness, but the Northern Territory decided to bless me with a little stomach bug at the same time which has knocked me around for over 6 weeks now. 

While the trip was great, and I'll write a bit of a recap soon, I am very glad to be home. At 12 weeks now, I'm hoping the second trimester will bring me some much needed energy and an appetite, for baking, eating and blogging. There is a lot going on in our garden at the moment after 3 months of neglect, which I've snapped a few pictures of so will write a garden update in the next few days, and tomorrow is Chicky's 4th birthday (where has the time gone?) so I will be required to make a cake with some hideously coloured icing.

So we're back from our fantastic adventure, and the blog should be experiencing a rebirth soon, once I can stay awake past 8pm :) Thanks for hanging around!

In My Kitchen - June 2012

Wow, it's been a long time. The Kimberly consumed my energy and attention, and deprived me of electricity, phone reception and internet access. Right now we're in Nhulunbuy, NT, staying with friends, so I have some time to show you what I have in my kitchen.

Before leaving Perth I saw a photo of someone making use of a tiny apartment with a mobile herb garden. I didn't really have the time to set up anything complex, but when I saw these cute containers in Bunnings I thought they would be perfect. It's basically a little tub with some compressed soil, a packet of seeds and a plastic lid. You add water to the soil to make it expand, sew your seeds and cover with a lid until seedlings emerge. The clear plastic lid makes it like a little green house. Once the seedlings are established you can remove the lid. 

The basil is much bigger now than when I took this picture, and it's almost at the point of picking. Dried herbs have served me well on the trip up to now, but soon I'll be able to make use of these fresh ones. The chives have a little way to go but they are growing well too.

In my kitchen is a small set of electric scales. These are identical in design to the ones I have at home and cost me $6 on clearance because apparently no one wanted to buy the random patterned version. I have to admit I haven't been using them as religiously as I would at home. Camping for the last 7 weeks has brought out the less precise and more ad hoc cook in me.

To do the camper trailer justice, I thought I should show case the most valued aspect of the kitchen: the electric water pump and tap. Mk 1 of the  kitchen had a manual pump tap, and after a weekend trip of pumping water by hand, at approximately my shoulder height, it was time for plan B. We carry up to 120L of water in the tanks, and all this I can access with a handy tap. Running water is great! It's just like being at home.

I've recently acquired a camp oven, the type you put in a camp fire. I've already made casserole, muesli bars, damper and a cake in there but I'm still perfecting the art. I'll be sure to snap a picture for next month's In My Kitchen post. Take a look at Celia's blog over at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial to see what's happening in some other kitchens this month.