Mini Cupcakes

The small Queen is arriving home from a week long school camp and her loyal subjects (her father and I ) have missed her.  Her favourite color is orange, so I spent some time today creating some mini cupcakes with orange frosting for her benefit.

Best ever bread and butter pudding

My husband loves Bread and butter pudding so when I saw this the other day I had to buy it for him for his birthday.  As soon as it arrived I handed it over and guess what we had for dinner last night?

We followed the recipe provided on the dish with a few substitutions.

The best ever bread and butter pudding recipe goes as follows:
Preheat oven to 180c, trim crusts from 6 slices of white bread, butter each slice and cut into 4 triangles.  Arrange overlapping slightly, butter side up in the base of this dish. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup sultanas. In a bowl, whisk together 3 eggs, 1/4 cup castor sugar, 2 1/2 cups of milk and                                                                teaspoon of vanilla essence. Pour over the bread. Sprinkle with     
                                                      nutmeg and bake for 50 minutes.

perfection

Instead of using full cream milk we used skim milk and we spread the bread with flora light proactive.  We will definately be making this again.

Emerald Bank Café and Chocolate Shop

A visit to Shepparton is not complete for us nowdays unless we call in to Emerald Bank Café (also known as the Windmill Café) right on the edge of town. It does business as a cafe but also has a chocolate shop attached to it with a delicious range of Chocolatier chocolates.

We wandered in one cold day a few months back for a hot chocolate.  As we watched our glass mugs being half filled with chocolate buttons then topped to full with hot frothed milk we knew we were in for a treat.

You are able to choose from white, dark or milk chocolate buttons that are the cafes own blend, so we were told.

Lemon tart

    So, today I took the pastry I made yesterday rolled it and lined the tin. 
 This is a very firm pastry and I did have to play with it to warm it a littlre before I rolled it and lined the tin with it.  I blind baked it for 10 minutes then removed the greaseproof paper and baked it for a further 10 minutes. The it was onto the lemon filling.

   Lemon filling                                                                                        

finely grated zest and juice of 2 lemons

115 g unsalted butter, melted

3 eggs

⅔ cup caster sugar

¼ cup plain flour, sifted

1 tablespoon cornflour, sifted

  

Mix together the lemon zest and juice, melted butter, eggs, sugar, flour and cornflour in a large bowl and beat until smooth. Pour filling into tart pastry and bake for 15 minutes or until the filling has set, allow to cool in tin.
Dust with icing sugar and serve. Seriously this pastry make take a little extra work but it has that wonderful shortbread taste and texture.

                         
                                  

Sweet Shortcrust pastry with a hint of lemon

 The next few weeks for me will have a Lemony theme. A good way to start my first hesitant foray into blogging. The focus for this weekend will be a lemon or lemon curd tart and I can't have a good tart without a good tart pastry. So I've adapted the one Matt Moran used for his Frangipane Tart on MasterChef Australia.   


Ingredients

375g plain flour
50g icing sugar
200g butter
1 egg
Zest of two lemons
 Note : this pastry will line two tins


Step 1: Preheat oven to 180°C. Put a baking tray in the oven. Grease and line the base of one or two 18cm loose
bottomed tart tin.  (this pastry will line two 18cm tins or you can freeze the remaining pastry for up to 4 weeks )

Step 1:  To make the pastry, add the flour, icing sugar butter and lemon zest to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.

 Add the egg and pulse again until the dough comes together. Wrap in cling wrap,then rest in the fridge for about 1 hour.

Step 2: On a lightly floured surface, roll out half of the pastry until 3-4mm thick. Line the tart tin with pastry, prick the base all over with a fork then rest in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Line the pastry case with baking paper and fill with rice or pie weights place on baking tray and bake for 12 to 15 minutes until pastry is set and golden.