Sep 14
Peanut butter is one of my favorite foods. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before. I also love no-bake pies and tarts, not only because they’re easy, but they’re cold and taste great on summer days. True, it’s not summer quite yet in Australia, but it’s getting there.
Sep 7
As the story goes, the Australian lamington was created in December of 1901 in Government House in Queensland, where Lord Lamington was residing as the then-Governor of Queensland. Depending on which article you read on the internets, the lamington was either created by a maid working in the Government House kitchen who accidentally dropped a piece of sponge cake in melted chocolate, and at the suggestion of Lord Lamington, it was then sprinkled in shredded coconut to keep his fingers clean, or it was created out of a lack of ingredients by the chef at Government House when he was called upon unexpectedly to create something tasty for guests. There’s even another article that claims that whatever you read about the history of the lamington is probably a myth, as they were most likely created by Amy Shauer in a cooking class and named after Lady Lamington, who was the school’s patroness.
Whatever their true history, lamingtons are an Australian icon and you can find them in any bakery across Australia. Lamingtons are cube-shaped pieces of sponge cake, usually day-old sponge cake, that are dipped in chocolate icing and then rolled in shredded coconut. You might also see lamingtons that are filled with either jam or cream. They look very pretty (and sometimes they look very messy) and they are very yummy, especially when enjoyed alongside a hot cuppa.
Sep 3
It was the weekend. My mom and I were out at the mall, spending money here and there on things we didn’t necessarily need. We were tired from walking from shop to shop and carrying our shopping bags, and we were hungry. On the way home, we stopped at our then-favorite fast food restaurant, where we ordered our usual. Cheeseburgers, fries, and a Frosty – I’m sure our arteries were screaming in horror each time we stopped at this place!
Our conversations covered many topics as we calmed our hungry bellies, but there was always one topic that came up every time – my mom’s lifelong habit of dipping her French fries into her Frosty/milkshake/ice cream and then eating them. I found it appalling, yet somewhere deep inside, secretly, I knew exactly what she meant. I liked to drink a big swig of my milkshake after eating a handful of fries. But never, never, would I ever blatantly dip a French fry into my milkshake like that. The very act was offensive, to say the least.
Aug 30
So you’ve just read the title to this post. I can actually hear a shocked gasp among my readers – you haven’t seen a savory recipe at The Sweetest Kitchen in a very long time! How strange! Well, I just want to prove to you that we do really eat foods other than cakes and cookies in this house. It’s just that I prefer blogging about the sweet foods!
Last week I picked up a new delicious. magazine; September 2010′s issue. There was a recipe inside for spaghetti puttanesca, which is a dish I’ve been wanting to make for the past few months. Since the recipe was now in one of my favorite magazines, I wrote down the ingredients list and immediately went out and stocked my pantry with semi-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives and anchovy fillets. These ingredients aren’t something I’d normally keep in the pantry, but the rest of the ingredient list is normal for our pantry/refrigerator.
What took longest in making this dish was the preparation. The cooking was simply a breeze, couldn’t have been easier. The house smelled amazing while the sauce was cooking in the frying pan; I’m sure you could have smelled it from the street had you been standing outside. I’ve never, ever eaten anchovies (to my knowledge), so I was looking forward to trying this and wondering how they would taste.
Aug 25
My baby boy, Miles, turned 1 year old yesterday. I can hardly believe it. He’s been the sweetest, most easy-going baby I’ve dealt with so far. His only problem is that he still only has two teeth. I’ve been reluctant to try too many different foods, like the chewier or harder kinds, because of this. He doesn’t like a lot of the solid food that I give him, but so far he likes French fries (I know, worst food ever!), bread, crackers, cheese, yogurt and cucumbers. Bananas and strawberries and apples, not so much.
He doesn’t like pureed food. I believe it’s because he has to be spoon-fed to eat it properly, and when he sees his older sister and brother eating with their fingers or a fork or spoon, he wants to eat like they are. After all, spoon-feeding is for babies!
Recently I went shopping for bigger clothes for Miles with my mother-in-law and bought him a couple of outfits. You’d think that he could just wear clothes that his 3-year-old brother had grown out of, but don’t forget that we moved to the Southern Hemisphere – the summery clothes that fit his older brother when he was 1 year old will not do in winter Down Under! Our seasons are completely opposite and this has been a little annoying, as we’ve had to basically buy all new clothing for the baby. Ah well, it’s not all bad though – shopping for baby clothes is so fun (and terribly addicting)!
For Miles’ first birthday celebration I planned on making a simple batch of colorful cupcakes. I decided on chocolate-on-chocolate cupcakes with mini rainbow chocolate chip decorations.
Aug 18
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.
Aug 14
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.
Aug 6
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.
Aug 2
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!
Jul 29
As I was planning for my daughter’s 5th birthday party, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Donna Hay magazine’s annual kids’ issue. Judging by the cover of the magazine, I would surely find something beautiful inside to make for my daughter’s birthday. On the morning of the magazine’s release, I bought my copy and started flipping through the pages. There were so many neat things, including the cover recipe for chocolate cups. But I found what I wanted on page 115. It was called a rainbow layer cake, but it looked more like neapolitan cake, with chocolate, pink and white layers, rather than a rainbow. There was what looked to be a fluffy, white frosting in between the layers and all over the cake. Dotting the frosting in 3 rings around the cake were pink and white mini marshmallows that had been cut in half. It looked really beautiful and it looked exactly like something my daughter would love. There’s a picture of the cake in the magazine at the bottom of this post.
I was a little skeptical about the cake to begin with. One reason is because I have never had a good result from any recipe I’ve tried from Donna Hay. I think the reason for this is that Donna Hay is a food stylist, not a chef! Another reason I was skeptical about this cake is because the entire thing contains 750 grams, or 1.7 pounds, of butter. That is a lot of butter. Unfortunately, I still wanted to make it and my reasoning was that it was just a birthday cake, we don’t eat that much butter all the time!
I was also skeptical because the way this cake is made involves a method I have never used before. Donna Hay calls it “melt and mix”. 250 grams of butter is melted, then the entire list of ingredients is dumped together into the mixing bowl at once and then mixed. This is not the normal way to make cake. This method is used in most of the birthday cake/cupcake recipes in Donna Hay’s kids’ magazine. I want to say right now that I will never make a cake this way again! There are definitely other things I want to try in the magazine, but I will be using my own favorite cake recipes instead of Donna Hay’s.
Jul 26
We do a big grocery shop once per week on Saturdays, and through the week I might stop in at the store and pick up any extras. Usually by Thursday, Friday we start to scrounge around a bit to make up a meal using bits of this, or scraps of that. It’s on these last days of the week that I’m looking for something sweet to make using only the most basic ingredients that I always seem to have on hand – flour, baking soda or powder, sugar, milk, eggs, etc. Well, I’ve found the perfect recipe for these days when I’m running out of ingredients – pikelets.
I can hear a lot of you asking yourself, “What are pikelets?”! I had never heard of them until I moved to Australia. Pikelets are basically a mini pancake. They are not served with maple syrup, however; they are generally eaten with jam and whipped cream. And you can eat them either cold or warm, whereas for pancakes, it’s definitely best to eat them warm. You’ll only need 4 ingredients (plus some melted butter to grease the pan) to make pikelets and it’s so easy to do!
Jamieanne has a passion for food and baking that dates back to her early childhood. She is the author of The Sweetest Kitchen blog, which features her favorite recipes from magazines, cookbooks and other food blogs. Keep up to date with Jamieanne and her blog by following on:
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