This recipe is pretty easy and well worth making for a lovely treat. If you’ve ever made home made ice cream or custard you’ll find it a doddle but even if you haven’t, it’s just a few careful steps. I loved this comforting, childlike dessert! So velvety, creamy and full of sweet caramel flavour. The[read more…]
I’m really very enamored with brioche pudding these days. This one’s full of squishy blueberries and crunchy almonds and was gorgeous with a drizzle of cream. I’m amazed actually, that a tiny bit of effort with a bit of bread; albeit lovely and luxurious brioche (I used a frozen one I made previously but you could always buy it from a[read more…]
I love these old-fashioned, citrusy, sweet little bars and they’re so easy to make. I whip up a batch, freeze them and take them out to defrost for dessert emergencies (no really! There is such a thing, you know there is). You can also swap the lemon juice for lime for an even zestier flavour.[read more…]
I love a classic chicken salad so was really keen to try this when I spotted it online recently. And it is a particularly lovely salad but … the problem with chefy type recipes is, not that they’re difficult but that there’s a lot of steps to things, not to mention the washing up afterwards. So I didn’t[read more…]
I don’t often use cake or bread mixes as I enjoy baking from scratch, however it’s nice and convenient to use them occasionally and they have come a long way in the past decade or so. I also appreciate that people don’t always have the time or inclination to bake from scratch; I’m definitely no domestic goddess, I[read more…]
This is one of those refrigerator pasta dishes (stuff left over in your crisper) I made a while back when cherry toms were still nice, which turned out so tasty, it’ll now be a regular dish in warmer weather. The lemony, garlicky mushrooms, sweet cherry tomatoes and peppery rocket were a lovely combination and so full of natural, healthy,[read more…]
This method of roasting chicken changed my life. Tender, fall-of-the-bone, fragrant and full of the good things in cooking; lemon, garlic and herbs. No more basting, cleaning the oven or worrying about a dry roast – you simply place a quickly prepared chicken into the oven, forget about it for 1 1/2 hours or so, then take the[read more…]
Passionfruit and white chocolate is an enticing combination although I never thought of it until I had this very flavoured muffin in a cafe once years ago and it made perfect sense – even though I’m not the biggest fan of white chocolate. It often seems too cloyingly sweet to me but sometimes, roughly chopped bits of white[read more…]
There are so many bakeries selling delicious, healthy loaves; for example, the San Francisco sour dough bread I buy at our local bakery, and yet still I find the occasional bread making I do very satisfying and sort of old fashioned and traditional. I love the science of kneading the bread by hand and seeing it rise, watching it brown after being[read more…]
In saying goodbye to warmer weather, I made some berry bejeweled muffins made from ingredients I just had at home, which happen to be healthy and cute at the same time (also, we’re not quite ready for warm spicy treats yet, we still have our air con on currently). The muffin itself isn’t overly sweet however[read more…]
Friands are sweet, little, oval teatime cakes traditionally made with almond meal and egg whites. I don’t make them that often, not because they’re difficult, they’re not at all, but because they use egg whites which means you then have all these lovely egg yolks left over. So last weekend for afternoon tea I put together a[read more…]
I’m always on the lookout for tasty zucchini recipes, as I love it’s crisp freshness. When I saw a recipe for zucchini pasta in a magazine years ago, I thought it looked perfect for a healthy, weekday meal so I adapted it by adding some new flavours. I have lots of those actually. Does anyone else have a heap[read more…]
No you aren’t dreaming or hallucinating. This really is a thing – a wonderfully inspired recipe I discovered recently by lovely Sydney blogger Katrina Meynink, (also freelance food writer and recipe developer and lots of other things). You could say I did a double-take. Cookie dough chocolate brownies – no way! As a long time brownie lover, I’m[read more…]
Cornbread is a lovely, rustic addition to soups or casseroles. I make mine with fresh corn when I can, which means I usually make it in summer. So although cornbread might go with more cooler weather dishes traditionally, I find it’s a delicious accompaniment with a chicken salad or summer tomato soup or even as a snack[read more…]
This lovely seasonal galette was made with December peaches and cherries baked on a rainy afternoon just before Christmas Day (I’m uncomfortably aware it’s way way too late in the year to still be talking about Christmas but completely forgot I hadn’t posted this yet and am madly going through summer recipes before we aren’t in it anymore). I mean[read more…]
My bread carbohydrate addiction started early in life. After school, I’d run home from the bus stop, throw my bag in my room, my dog Goldie panting at my heels, run into the kitchen and cut massive doorstops of mum’s homemade wholemeal bread and add peanut butter or Nimbin cheese (the best cheddar cheese), think wistfully[read more…]
Apologies for the wordy title but … I had no idea what to call these saucy little tarts (ooh missus!). I’m a sucker for this type of hedonistic dessert – there’s something fundamentally appealing about the combination of fudgy cookies, cold, creamy ice cream with chocolate sauce and not minding getting chocolate all over your face while you’re[read more…]
I found this wonderful recipe for healthy candy bars recently (check out the rest of the site, it has tasty recipes for healthy minded people). I have a big bag of quinoa puffs which, while I love to eat them for breakfast, I wanted to do something a bit more fun with, so I thought I’d make these chocolatey[read more…]
I do love a classic potato salad. I’ve always enjoyed zesty, creamy ones so didn’t add anything to sweeten it up – if you prefer a sweeter salad, just replace some of the sour cream with mayonnaise. I make this recipe every summer and it’s a great combination of creamy and fresh with extra virgin olive[read more…]
It’s been raining heavily here for the past few days and doesn’t look like letting up any time soon. Rain’s lovely, for a night or so, drumming on the roof in that comforting way while I’m reading and listening to music, but goes on for too long and it makes everything a bit flat and gray. Anyway. I pulled my[read more…]
Pikelets are one of those nostalgic morning teas most of us in Australia grew up with, although apparently they’re Welsh in origin. I love that they’re a cross between a cake and a pancake, sort of a cakey pancake. They were lovely just dusted with icing sugar and a pot of tea.
Living in a big city where food is so easily accessible, lunch is one of those meals which is often neglected; it seems more convenient to grab fast food sometimes, especially on stressful days. It’s just as easy though, and well worth it to whip up a delicious and healthy meal at home in a matter of[read more…]
The other night I had a craving for some chicken and pasta so I roasted some Cajun spiced chicken breasts in the oven and served up a creamy, velvety rigatoni on the side. There’s no getting around it, this is the perfect way to cook chicken breast; it might be a bit easier to slice up the chicken and toss it around[read more…]
I’ve never appreciated the appeal of bread pudding – I always thought it would taste bland and I just couldn’t understand how bread belonged in a pudding. While shopping for Christmas I came across some brioche loaves which looked gorgeous and fluffy and sweet, thinking I would have some toasted with tea or something. But then for[read more…]
A wholesome, full-of-good-fats, restorative smoothie so delightfully creamy it doesn’t even taste healthy. If you feel you need some healthy, heart starting goodness after the debauchery of Christmas and New Years, this is just the thing.
Baked cheesecake is one of two of my favourite desserts in the whole world ever (the other is creme brulee). I don’t make it often because despite normally avoiding moral judgments about food, it’s difficult to rationalise eating quite so much fat and sugar in one sitting in a normal day-to-day setting. And I refuse to make low fat desserts[read more…]
Champagne cocktails are so 60s and glamorous and I love them so I made some girly drinks for Christmas which were pretty and tasted lovely. A bit too much actually, they’re really quite intoxicating so you’ve been warned. Champagne is kind of naughty like that – all bubbly and innocent then bam! I thought I’d go sparkly pink[read more…]
I made a pretty cake yesterday to celebrate my other half’s birthday. Happy birthday to my darling Ant. We’re on holidays at the moment and it’s wonderful. This cake was dreamy .. I really loved the chocolate flavour combined with a surprising fluffy cloud of vanilla frosting; kind of unexpected, like brown eyes with blonde[read more…]
This luscious, beautifully coloured sauce is wonderful served warm over pancakes, Greek yoghurt or ice cream. It’s super easy to make and will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days or so.
I don’t often make my own pizza base. Sheer laziness I suspect but you know, I really enjoy kneading dough, it’s quite therapeutic and satisfying. I felt like a bit of energetic kneading recently so I whipped up a simple pizza from scratch, using seasonal vegetables – the best kind. Roast vegetables are so sweet[read more…]
