Aug 21st, 2010
by Jamieanne.
For our second Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge, the mystery ingredient was white chocolate. I chose this because I feel that it is often overlooked, while most people choose to use a milk, dark or flavored chocolate in their baking. All of the participants in this month’s challenge did a brilliant job at bringing white chocolate to the spotlight with their cupcake creations and I’m sure it’s going to make choosing just two favorites very difficult!
We’ve got a record 28 entries this month, compared to last month’s 17 entries. Thank you for helping to spread the word about the Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge!
Voting is now open to everyone. Have a look through the entries, listed below. Visit their blogs to read more about how they created their cupcake. You can choose TWO of your favorite cupcakes – the ones that you think are most creative and you would be most likely to eat and enjoy – and vote for those two in the poll in the sidebar to the right. Voting closes in 5 days, on August 26. The 5 cupcakes that receive the most votes will then go into a random draw where one winner will be chosen.
You can only vote once for your favorite two. For more about how the voting works for this competition, read this page.
Here are the cupcakes for August 2010′s Mystery Box ingredient – WHITE CHOCOLATE:
VOTING IS NOW OVER FOR THE WHITE CHOCOLATE CHALLENGE
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Posted in: Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge.
Tagged: mystery box · roundup · white chocolate
Aug 18th, 2010
by Jamieanne.
I made these cupcake-like meringues earlier this year but never actually posted about them. The recipe comes from Australian Women’s Weekly magazine; it was yet another recipe I found while in the parents’ room at my daughter’s ballet lessons. I didn’t rip out the page that the recipe was printed on, and I didn’t copy it down because I didn’t have a pen. Instead, I thought that I’d surely find it on the internet. But it wasn’t listed at the AWW website and I couldn’t find any recipe like it. I really wanted to make these meringues and didn’t want to wait until the next week’s ballet lesson to copy the recipe! I asked on the forum at taste.com.au if anyone had the recipe and luckily someone typed it up for me.
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Posted in: Other.
Tagged: chocolate · hazelnut · meringue
Aug 14th, 2010
by Jamieanne.
Lately I have been obsessed with foods that go perfectly with tea or coffee. I’m particularly interested in scones. In fact, I chose a scone with jam and cream to go with my flat white coffee at Thyme Square Cafe yesterday morning while I was out with my two sons and mother-in-law. Can you believe that I chose a scone over cupcakes or a slice of delicious cake? I’m still in awe of my decision, because I’m not sure how it happened!
I’ve made scones before. They were easy and turned out quite nice. So when I saw the recipe for scones with jam and cream in Issue #3 of MasterChef Australia magazine – the same recipes they used on the show for the Country Women’s Association challenge – I was sure I could make all three components quite easily.
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Posted in: Other.
Tagged: apple · conserve · jam · mascarpone · scones · strawberry
Aug 6th, 2010
by Jamieanne.
I love food magazines. I currently have three favorite ones – MasterChef Australia, delicious., and Good Taste. A few issues of each of these are scattered on my coffee table and I find myself frequently flipping through them. It seems that different recipes appeal to me on different days – one recipe that I don’t like so much one day may be a recipe that I love on the next day.
The recipe I’m about to share with you was one of those that I didn’t like one day, but fell in love with the next day – dark chocolate cookies with pistachios and milk chocolate chunks. It comes from the August 2010 issue of delicious. magazine, and was created by Bill Granger.
I’ve never been keen on pistachios, which is why I originally skipped over the recipe. Sure, the picture of the cookies in the magazine looked droolworthy, but when I read that there were pistachios I just turned the page. But the next time I looked at the magazine, these cookies basically screamed out at me to make them immediately. I had everything on hand already, except the pistachios. I chose a bag of pistachios that were already shelled so that I wouldn’t have to waste time in shelling them myself.
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Posted in: Cookies.
Tagged: chocolate · Cookies · pistachio
Aug 2nd, 2010
by Jamieanne.
When I think about entertaining guests, there is one occasion that pops into my head every time. I really am not sure why, but it is a memory that has really stuck with me. It must have been 1997, soon after I had graduated high school, so I was 17 at this particular time. My mom had invited some of her work friends over for dinner, and I wasn’t looking forward to it – I was your average unsociable teen who would rather be listening to music in her room, surrounded by posters of Nirvana, Green Day, Dr Spock, Superman, etc. When my mom’s friends arrived, I excused myself to wander about outside, waiting to be called in when dinner was ready, when I’d have to put on a happy face.
While outside, I wandered about and ended up standing outside of our neighbor’s house. Our neighbor, who was a lovely, generous lady, had passed away some time earlier and her son was then living there on his own. Every other weekend or so, his 3 sons would come to stay with him. His sons were there on this particular day, and as I hadn’t seen them in a while (we used to play together all the time as children), I thought I’d just quickly stop in to say hi.
The visit with these guys didn’t end up being so quick… we played some Nintendo (I believe it might have been Nintendo 64) – Super Mario Kart – and chatted a bit about what we were up to these days. They had planned on going to see the movie In & Out that night and invited me to come with them. I called my mom from their house and she said it was fine if I wanted to go with them. I was relieved I wouldn’t have to pretend to be all cheerful and polite with my mom’s friends!
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Posted in: Bread, Uncategorized.
Tagged: banana · bread · honey · ricotta
