Pink Lemonade Cookies

When life gives you lemons . . . make lemonade! Or even better, pink lemonade cookies. These are just so pretty, made using a variation of my old favorite, the Edmonds cookbook basic biscuits.

Ingredients:

125 grams butter
3/4 cup sugar
Juice and grated rind of two lemons
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

50g butter
1/2 teaspoon strawberry essence
1 cups icing sugar
1 tablespoon of hot water (approx)

Preheat oven to 190 degrees. 

Cream softened butter and sugar. Once light and fluffy add the lemon juice and rind and egg. Beat well. Mix in sifted flour and baking powder. 

Roll into small balls before flattening onto a baking tray. 

Bake for about ten minutes, until golden brown. 

And once cooled, make the icing: 

Cream softened butter until light and fluffy. Add strawberry essence. Gradually beat in icing sugar, beating untill smooth. Add enough hot water to give a good consistency for spreading. Voila!

Ice cookies, stand back to admire!

So pretty x 

Piniata Cookies: Attempt #1

Its no secret I love pretty much anything mexican . . . and baking with food coloring (the ladies at my work tease me about it often!) . . . so when I saw this recipe for Piniata Cookies, it was pretty much a given I would have to give it a try. This is my first attempt!

This is what the finished product should look like: 

Unfortunately it didn't really go to plan, I will be trying this again very soon with a tried and true sugar cookie recipe. The recipe quoted is really oily and puffed up when it was baked, which I wasn't expecting. 

Anyway, it is an interesting baking technique and such an awesome idea! 

Here is my layered cookie block:

And once sliced:

The recipe called for the cookie slices to be baked and then cut with cookie cutters. But my cookies unfortunately puffed up when baked. They tasted good, but would not have worked for the purposes of these piniata cookies, they were way too thick:

I figure that blogging can't always be about my successes, I am not especially proud of these cookies but am looking forward to trying again without an epic fail- Attempt #2 will be completed and documented shortly!!

Wannabe vegetarian - Stuffed capsicums (peppers)

This is an easy way to make the most of all of the cheap capsicums we have about at the moment.

Cut the top off the capsicum, remove the seeds etc and set aside.  

In a pan cook up chopped onion, garlic, olives, fresh tomatoes, sundried tomatoes and any of the capsicum you have managed to salvage:

Once nicely cooked through layer this mixture with crumbled feta in the capsicums. Top with a few wedges of feta before popping into the oven for approximately half an hour.

Served with Mediterranean couscous.  

Yum!

Nautilus

Nautlius Restaurant

Sulphur Point

Tauranga

Enjoyed a really lovely meal at Nautilus this evening.

We started with the 'Artisan breads',

 a platter of fresh bread served with Olive Oil, dips and Olives. 

The perfect sized entree for two.

For mains, I had the Fish of the Day. This is without a doubt the best meal out I have had in ages! Fairly decent sized Tarakihi fillet, poached, 3 scallops, 3 mussels, 3 prawns, and veges - broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, parsnip and potatoes. For someone as indecisive as me this was the perfect meal - a posh seafood medley really. Yummmo!!

My husband had the Scotch fillet, and if I hadn't enjoyed my meal so much I would have been very jealous. This was amazingly presented - a generous portion of steak served with fries, onion rings, and gravy (sorry, pinot noir jus sauce). Also delicious.

The atmosphere at Nautilus was buzzing, obviously plenty of regulars and everyone's meals looked amazing. Good service, good food, good wine. Slightly on the pricey side so probably best saved for a special treat. 

I am well impressed with Nautilus, will definitely be returning again after such a delightful culinary experience! Wow.

Banana and Walnut loaf

I'm a bit useless with bananas. I always promise myself I will eat them before they become past their best, but I never do. So once again I had the dilemma of what to do with over-ripe bananas, left in a sorry state in the fruit bowl. 

I have been meaning to try out banana loaf, or bread for a long while and today I finally got around to it. And as with a lot of things I wish I had got around to this a lot sooner. How many opportunities for delicious banana loaf have I previously missed? One will never know.   

Here is my recipe for banana and walnut loaf, it is a variation from my beloved Edmonds cookbooks' banana loaf recipe. My recipe calls for the addition of walnuts, less butter, brown sugar.

Ingredients:

3.5 cups of self raising flour

half a teaspoon of baking soda

half a teaspoon of salt

1 cup of brown sugar

4 eggs

half a cup of milk

75 grams melted butter

2 mashed bananas

1 cup of chopped walnuts

Sift flour, baking soda and salt into a bowl before adding brown sugar. In a second bowl beat the eggs before stir in milk, melted butter, mashed bananas and walnuts (don't forget to set aside a few walnuts for sprinkling on the top of the loaf).

Mix the liquid ingredients quickly into the dry ingredients, stirring until everything is just combined.

Transfer mixture into a greased cake tin, sprinkle with walnuts and bake at 180 degrees for approx 50 minutes (maybe longer, I lost track of time). Test with a skewer until it comes out clean, reassurance that the loaf is cooked right through . . .

Like so.

Spread with butter . . .

 and enjoy!

Mexican Night: Tacquitos

Yes, I love Mexican food. And for good reason . . . this is yet another excellent addition to my repertoire- Tacquitos, which I think are a bit of a cross between burritos and enchiladas.

The three main ingredients are chilli, grated cheese and (store brought) burritos. I used a vegetarian chilli made with beans, chopped onions, capsicum and tomatoes, garlic, coriander, and because I like it to have a bit of a kick: chopped chilli and chilli sauce.

Spread 2-3 tablespoons of chilli across the middle of a tortilla and sprinkle with grated cheese. Then roll it up, as tight as possible without losing chilli out the sides and pop into a greased baking dish. Repeat until your dish is full.

Sprinkle with cheese and bake at 220 degrees
for 20 - 30 minutes until golden brown:

And serve with guacamole
(avocado, chopped tomato and red onion, lime juice and coriander)

Yum!

Red Velvet Layer Cake

I spent most of yesterday in the kitchen with a friend making a Red Velvet Layer Cake for her fiance's birthday. It must be love . . . this took us close to four hours in total, but was so worth it!

We separated the red velvet cake mix into four greased glasses to make sure each layer would be the same size.

Before baking each individually:

Once all layers had cooled they were then wrapped in cling film and popped in the freezer, to make them easier to ice.

Yummmmm this looks (and tasted) just amazing, a work of art! 

 

Summer of Cider

The variety of ciders available these days is craaazy!

Recently my Husband celebrated his 30th birthday and for the special occaison collected 30 different ciders for a little cider tasting. It was a lot easier than you'd think! The most unusual flavour was a Tutti Fruti cider from the UK. 

My current favourite Cider is Rekorderlig, a Swedish cider. The flavours are amazing! These are in pretty high demand and seem to be in short supply so can at times prove to be hard to your hands on.

Stocking up on strawberry and lime:

And the pear in action:

If you havn't already done so, you should give it a try.

You won't regret it!

 

Available in Tauranga from Liquorland wholesale and Za Bar.

Neenish Tarts

Nothing wrong with a little bit of good old fashioned baking! 

I used the Neenish Tart recipe from my trusty Edmonds Cookbook for these.

Sweet shortcrust pastry - for pie cases
Ingredients:
125g butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

Cream butter and sugar before adding egg and beating well. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. Mix into creamed mixture, stirring well. I cheated and used my food processer which I am slightly obsessed with at the moment (it can do pretty much anything!)

Turn mixture onto floured surface and knead well.

Cool pastry in the fridge for 15 minutes. 

Roll out to 2mm thickness, cut into rounds and use to line mini muffin cases. Prick bases. 

Bake for 12 minutes or until cooked. Cool before filling . . .

Filling Ingredients
Beat together:
Half a can of sweetened condensed milk
Half a cup of sifted icing sugar
The juice from one lemon
(Edmonds also calls for 100g of butter but I omitted this!)

Refrigerate to set.

Aaand ice tarts half and half with first vanilla, and then chocolate icing. 

Voila! Fairly impressive looking and delicious. Success.

Lolly cake!

Thanks to NZGirl I recently received a few tins of Highlander Sweetened Condensed Milk for an Influencer Review . . . the idea is that I use these to whip up a little baking and let them know how I go. 

So last night I went on a bit of a baking binge . . .

The first of my experimentations was Lolly Cake, a childhood favourite. On a really bad day you are still quite likely to find me down at the bakery picking up a slice of lolly cake to treat myself!

Ingredients:

100 grams of butter

1/2 a can of Sweetened condensed milk

1 packet of malt biscuits

1 packet of eskimo lollies

This is easy peasy. As it doesn't require any oven baking, I'm not sure that I can even call this baking as such!

Use a food processer to turn the malt biscuits to crumbs. 

Turn into a bowl and add the chopped up eskimo lollies.

Melt together the butter and sweetened condensed milk, before stirring in with the malt biscuit/ lolly mixture.

Leave to cool, form into a roll and cover in gladwrap. It would be at this point that you would also roll in coconut to coat, if you were that way inclined! 

Refrigerate (I did this overnight)

Cut into slices. 

Consume.

I always had an inkling that Lolly cake wasn't exactly the healthiest of food, but after making it myself I was just a little put off by the fact that it is basically just butter and sweetened condensed milk! Lucky Highlander also give you the option of using their 'lite' version sweetened condensed milk, but this is still definitely one to exercise portion control with!