Jul 21
With all the excitement I’ve had receiving entries for my Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge, I had forgotten that I wanted to post about the peanut butter cupcakes with white chocolate frosting that I had made last week! I got the inspiration for these cupcakes when I made these peanut butter cookies and added white chocolate chunks to the cookie dough. It was a really nice combination. I just had to make a cupcake out of it.
Jul 14
My family and I have relatively recently moved back to Sydney, Australia from Indiana, USA. There were many reasons why we were looking forward to moving back. And one giant reason why we were not looking forward to moving back – 3 flights with 3 young children, including a 3-month-old baby! We went alright though, as it turned out that the baby was actually the easiest to travel with. He spent most of his time in a Peanut Shell sling, either nursing or asleep. The real trouble was with our 4-year-old and 2-year-old, who were so full of energy, yet were so incredibly tired. Why do kids do that – the more tired they are, the more wild they become? After running around the seats at the gate in San Francisco’s airport during our 5-hour layover, they finally fell asleep in those seats – my daughter’s face was buried under her arms, and my son fell asleep bent over the seat, with his feet still standing on the floor. It was a nightmare, the whole entire trip, but it still went better than what I thought it would have.
We just had to keep looking on the bright side – our plane finally touching down in Sydney.
We’ve been back for about 7 months now and it feels like we never even spent those 3 long years in the US. Even though we did spend all that time there, we didn’t make many friends and we didn’t know our neighbors very well; we didn’t even get out much (but there’s so much more to do here than where we were in Indiana). Here, we are lucky to have some great neighbors – one of them even grows their own fruit and vegetables, organically, and are kind enough to share their bounty with us, such as butternut pumpkins, persimmons, plums, lemons and limes. I’ve made pumpkin bread, persimmon bread, a lime tart, lemon melting moments and lemon butter with some of these fruits. It’s great to bake with fresh food that I know is free from chemicals.
Jul 9
One of my most favorite comfort foods is French toast. I just love it, especially on a cold, winter morning, or in some cases, a cold, winter evening for dinner! I don’t know who invented French toast – who would have thought to coat a slice of bread in raw eggs, milk and cinnamon and then fry it? – but I praise them!
My own basic recipe for French toast is below. I usually pour some maple syrup over it, sometimes with bananas, if I have any. Sometimes I even caramelize the bananas. But last week, I had a heap of leftover salted butter caramel sauce from the popcorn ice cream I had made and wanted to do something special with, something that I could share with others.
An idea suddenly popped into my head one night. I was craving French toast (which was not at all unusual for me!) and was thinking of ways I could jazz it up. How about caramel French toast? No… it would need a fruit to go with it… how about apples? Yes, how about caramel apple French toast!
And you know what? It was one of the best dishes I have ever eaten. It was so good, that I found myself making it again the very next day.
Jul 6
We celebrated my son’s 3rd birthday over the weekend. It wasn’t anything special, as I’m not that great of a party planner! We just invited nana over, had a picnic and cake outside and opened presents. I didn’t even make the cake from scratch (I can hear your sounds of disgust at that statement!). I used Green’s Really Good Chocolate Cake mix and got a lovely, dense, chocolatey cake that I decorated with crushed Maltesers (the Australian version of Whoppers in the US).
Jul 4
I don’t wear a lot of jewelry, but when I do, I’ll wear necklaces, like this really pretty mom-necklace my mom gave me for my birthday. So when Wendie from Miss Kitty Creations contacted me about reviewing her handmade cupcake charms, I was immediately interested because I also love displaying my cupcake-love in necklace form!
Wendie’s cupcake charms are scented with realistic scents that almost remind me of my old Strawberry Shortcake dolls – I just love that smell! The charms are about 3/4-inch tall and if you have collectible dolls, these cupcakes are a perfect size for them (like mine pictured below).
What I really like about them is not only how yummy they smell, but how realistic they look. I chose a red velvet cupcake that smells like chocolate covered cherries…
Jun 28
I briefly mentioned the popcorn ice cream with salted butter caramel sauce from Almost Bourdain in my previous post. I was pretty much floored when I read about this popcorn ice cream because it sounded amazing. I sure hope that Ellie doesn’t mind if I post about her yet again!, but I made her popcorn ice cream last week and it definitely was amazing!
First of all, I don’t have an ice cream maker. So why was I even thinking about making any kind of ice cream at all? Well, because I had read an article in delicious. magazine on how to hand-churn ice cream. Sure, it takes longer, but it’ll still work in the end.
Jun 22
I don’t have a lot to say at this particular moment in time, but I did quickly want to share with you something sweet I made last week. It was a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie cake, which I found at Almost Bourdain. This blog is becoming one of my favorites – I found the recipe for the coconut bread I made there, which was just lovely, and I just stopped by the blog a little bit ago and found popcorn ice cream with salted butter caramel sauce. Oh my, there are just no words I can find to describe that, it pretty much left me speechless in awe.
Back to the peanut butter chocolate chip cookie cake. This is a cross between a gigantic peanut butter chocolate chip cookie and a cake, so it’s sort of difficult to classify it as either a cookie or a cake, in my opinion. It has the texture and appearance of a cookie, not the soft, tender crumb of a cake. The only way in which it resembles a cake is that it’s about 10 inches in diameter.
You can call it whatever you like, but chances are when you taste it, the only thing you’re going to be calling it is absolutely delicious.
Jun 17
A big thank you goes out to Cupcakes Take The Cake, where Rachel linked to my latest cupcake creation on Flickr, banana coconut cupcakes with creme fraiche frosting and coconut caramel sauce. I thought I’d better get the recipe for these awesome cupcakes on my blog so that all the visitors from CTTC can make these for themselves.
First of all, let me say that I’ve been planning these cupcakes for weeks. It all started when I made the coconut pancakes with bananas, creme fraiche and caramel sauce last month, which was a recipe from Valli Little in delicious. magazine. I loved those pancakes. The combination of those flavors was like nothing else my tastebuds have ever experienced (probably mostly because I had never eaten creme fraiche!). I started thinking that this flavor combination would taste great as a cupcake as well, and I haven’t made cupcakes in ages!
Over the past week I finally made up my mind as to how I would make these cupcakes. I would use a banana cupcake recipe and stir sweetened shredded coconut into the batter. The frosting would be something of my own creation, which turned out fabulous – creme fraiche whipped with confectioners’ sugar. I made the same caramel sauce for these cupcakes as I made for the pancakes, except I replaced the thickened cream with coconut milk (I would have used coconut cream if I had had any). This turned out fabulous as well, such a great flavor.
Jun 8
Here’s a little scenario. You have a craving for something chocolate. A chocolate cake, or cupcakes, or brownies perhaps. You dig out your favorite chocolate recipe to make sure you have all the ingredients… you realize you’re out of eggs… you don’t have a block of chocolate… your baking powder has expired… oh great, you can’t make anything after all! But wait…
Don’t give up! I have something for you! It’s buttery, it’s tender, it’s chocolatey, it’s chocolate shortbread!
Jun 4
My current favorite show on TV is MasterChef Australia. I watch it almost religiously each night (except Saturdays, which is the only day of the week that it isn’t on). It’s gotten to the point where, anytime I’m actually cooking or baking something from a recipe it feels like Gary Mehigan, George Calombaris and Matt Preston are looking over my shoulders, probably getting ready to play some mind games with me and ask if I think what I’m doing will turn out okay, or if I’ll finish in time.
I can’t say that watching MasterChef has made me any better in the kitchen. I have learned a couple of tricks and gained an ounce or two of knowledge about something or other. For instance, I don’t use a garlic crusher anymore; I use a knife and finely chop the garlic instead (Matt Moran is apparently disgusted with garlic crushers as they bruise the garlic). And if I need mayonnaise again, I’ll be making my own (Gary, George and Matt were obviously disgusted when one contestant used a jar of pre-made mayonnaise). Just things like that, I’ve learned. Nothing too life-changing.
My favorite parts of MasterChef are the Invention Tests (where the contestants have to make a dish based on one theme ingredient) and the Pressure Tests (where the 3 contestants of the least-liked dishes from the Invention Tests have to face off and one will be eliminated). One week, at one of these Pressure Tests, the dish they had to prepare was a black forest cake (recipe & photo here). This cake was 5 layers of sponge cake, chocolate ganache, mascarpone, hazelnut praline mousse, cherries, shaved chocolate, more cherries, it was like the black forest cake to end all black forest cakes.
Jun 1
Oh yes, it’s true, I went back to Sweetness The Patisserie in Epping again. There were just so many different things to try there that I couldn’t cover them all in one visit, of course, so I had to go back. I had to go back for that fudge, and more of those marshmallows.
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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