The Sweetest Kitchen

May 29

2 Awesome Quick Breads

I really love quick breads. I have a collection of many different kinds, but my favorite is always banana bread. We’ll start out this post with a banana bread recipe, but this particular one has two interesting twists, one of which may be new to you.

I’m not sure how I found this recipe, it may have been FoodGawker or TasteSpotting, but as soon as I found it, I bookmarked it. The photos from Food o’ del Mundo look fantastic, like the perfect banana bread.

The bread is spotted with chocolate chips, which isn’t much of a surprise, but it also includes the addition of crystallized ginger, which definitely surprised me! I had never had crystallized ginger before so I made this recipe a high-priority.

May 24

10 Comments

Coconut Pancakes With Caramel Sauce

When you look at a food magazine, the photo on the cover should invite you to open up the magazine, have a look, and then convince you to carry it to the checkout to purchase it. Most food magazines deliver this invite pretty well to me, especially if it has something sweet on the cover.

In this particular case, I was at the library browsing through the small selection of back issues of delicious. magazine. That’s when I saw it. A photo on the cover of November 2009′s issue that looked like a stack of Heaven with Heaven sauce and Heaven cream and a scattering of Heaven thrown on top. I clutched on to it immediately.

What was actually on the cover was a beautifully arranged stack of 3 coconut pancakes. In between the layers was a hearty creamy dollop of creme fraiche and sliced bananas. From the very top of the stack of pancakes, caramel sauce drizzled down and scattered about the stack was shredded coconut and a dusting of icing sugar.

Oh. My. God. The photo looked fantastic. And then, I made it for myself.

My stack looks sort of similar to the photo on the cover, but it doesn’t have the elegance that the cover photo did! But in the end, it didn’t matter to me one single bit what it looked like, because this is one of the most delicious stacks of pancakes I have ever eaten. Ever.

May 18

6 Comments

Sweetness The Patisserie

I love being back in Sydney. There are so many amazing bakeries to explore. I’ve been back in Sydney for almost 6 months but I’ve hardly explored outside of my suburb, mostly because the most amazing bakeries are at least one hour away from me (or at least the ones I know about are!). On a recent trip to the library to borrow a back issue of delicious. magazine (November 2009) I found a photo reference to Sweetness The Patisserie at Epping. I instantly perked up because Epping is not far away from me at all. A few days later, I was standing inside of Sweetness The Patisserie with my 2-year-old son, trying to make a decision on what to buy from this beautiful shop.

The shop is indeed beautiful. I wasn’t brave enough to ask if I could take a photo inside the shop, so all you get is this sideways shot of the outside! The inside of the shop is loaded with sweet treats of all kinds, including macarons, marshmallows, fudge, toffee, truffles, or, easier yet, let’s just say that if it’s sweet, it’s in this shop!

May 15

12 Comments

Bourke Street Bakery Carrot Cake

As we were planning on moving back to Sydney last year, I made a list of bakeries that I wanted to visit once we returned. One of them was Bourke Street Bakery in Surry Hills. I haven’t made it there yet, but have heard only the best things about the bakery.

Coincidentally, one of the delicious. magazines I borrowed from the library recently had a handful of recipes straight from Bourke Street Bakery. I copied them all down before returning the magazine, but wasn’t sure which I’d try first. After seeing a post on FoodGawker from Eat Well Eat Green, I knew my first recipe to try from Bourke Street Bakery would be the carrot cake.

May 13

2 Comments

Donna Hay's Molten Brownie Kit

When I made Donna Hay’s Chocolate Cupcake Mix, I promised you I’d eventually try out more of her dessert kits. For this post I chose the Molten Chocolate Chunk Brownie Kit. The picture of the brownies on the box looks to-die-for, which is why I chose these over the Chocolate Chip Cookie Kit (which I’m sure will be next).

Donna Hay’s chocolate cupcakes from the kit were pretty good, but I was disappointed in the frosting. There wasn’t enough of it, and it turned out much lighter in color than the frosting on the box, which was so dark it looked like fudge. Also, the wrappers kept peeling away from the cupcakes, which was quite annoying.

I wasn’t much happier with the brownies. All that is required to make the brownies is some butter and eggs, then you whisk it into the dry ingredients from the kit. After whisking, you mix the chocolate chunks in.

May 10

5 Comments

Treacle Scones

This was my fourth year as a mother for Mother’s Day. It’s been pretty amazing, the past four years. Mother’s Day hasn’t ever been a big celebration for us, maybe just a nicer meal than usual and a “Happy Mother’s Day”. This was the first year though that my four-year-old daughter was able to understand what Mother’s Day is, or well, sort of! She made a pretty sequined magnet and a collage at preschool for me for the special occasion.

I also got an Eco Cup because I mentioned earlier that I’d like to take a cup of coffee along with me on those cold, early mornings when I have to walk my daughter to preschool, but I didn’t have a nice travel cup.

And now I do. It looks almost just like a takeaway paper coffee cup, but it’s not. The cup is porcelain and the sleeve and lid are silicone. Apparently I can use it at coffee shops, if I request for the barista to fill it instead of a paper cup. Neat!

May 5

3 Comments

Fettuccine Bolognese

If you live in Australia, you know Coles. And you may have seen a commercial on TV where chef Curtis Stone takes a woman and her daughter shopping for ingredients for his fettuccine bolognese recipe. The cost of the ingredients for the recipe is supposed to be under $10.

I’m a Woolies girl myself, and I’m not a fan of Curtis Stone, but this recipe looked easy, cheap and tasty, so I visited Coles, grabbed the Curtis Stone recipe booklet at the front door and bought the ingredients. Well, it wasn’t under $10 because I bought a bigger package of ground beef (the leftovers I would freeze for later use). I wasn’t very interested in the cost, however, as I was more interested in how easy it would be, and whether my kids would like it or not!

I started cooking when I got home from the shops and I found the preparation was quite easy and relatively quick, just what I was after. The sauce cooks up nice, thick and fragrant. I love the chunky mushrooms and carrots.

The taste was so-so. Oh, it was good, definitely, but it just seemed to be lacking a little bit of flavor, like it could have used more seasoning (which would have been my fault for not using more) or more basil. I don’t know, I’m not a cook – I’m a baker!

Apr 27

22 Comments

Chocolate Peanut Butter Macarons

I’m sorry, but yes, this is another post about macarons. And yes, I have made three batches of macarons in three weeks (links to these are at the bottom of this post). While this third batch wasn’t a huge improvement over my other batches – still had wrinkly tops and imperfect feet – it was definitely the yummiest batch.

They are two of my favorite flavors – chocolate and peanut butter. The macaron shells are made with half almonds and half peanuts and the recipe is from, who else, Tartelette. They are filled with salted peanut butter filling, which is a recipe from Canelle et Vanille, and a simple milk chocolate ganache. We’re talking Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup macarons here, and they are fabulous!

Apr 23

10 Comments

Homemade Bread

If you’re a follower of The Sweetest Kitchen, you may know that I have never baked with yeast because I lack the courage to do so. I want to make a batch of cinnamon rolls using yeast sometime, but because I’m too scared of yeast, I settled for a yeast-free version. Oh, they were very yummy, indeed, but they had a cake-like texture which was far from a real cinnamon roll. This post isn’t about cinnamon rolls, by the way, but I’m working up to that.

Three weeks ago, I faced my fear of making macarons, so I felt brave enough to take on the yeast challenge. I couldn’t find the best recipe, so a friend recommended the basic bread recipe from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. She sent me a link to a video of the authors of this book making the basic recipe and I basically made my decision right then to make it.

It was so easy, I was nearly laughing at myself for having never done this before. Of course I realize that this is a no-knead bread and other types of bread may be a bit more difficult, but this particular recipe is a great introduction to those who may be a little timid around yeast because it is so laughably easy.

Apr 21

1 Comment

Matcha White Chocolate Macarons

My recent macaron challenge with Samantha of Sweet Remedy has sent me on a macaron whirlwind, and like so many other food bloggers, I have officially caught the macaron bug. I’m so glad I decided to finally make macarons, after months and months of being too intimidated by this tiny French treat to barely even think twice about making them.

One week after my first ever macarons, the coffee and Nutella ones, I was already setting out egg whites that had been aged in the refrigerator for my next batch, which were matcha macarons with white chocolate ganache filling. I had higher hopes for this batch. I had even bought a digital kitchen scale especially for my macaron baking. This is a brand new Breville one that I bought on eBay for $30 under retail price.

Apr 16

10 Comments

Mocha Cupcakes

I take my 4-year-old daughter to ballet classes on Tuesdays. She really enjoys it and has made a new friend in her class. It’s neat to see her perform some of the poses at home – one day she did a plie. Ballet term 2 is now starting after a 2-week long Easter holiday, and my daughter says she wants to continue with ballet.

Ballet class lasts only 30 minutes. Luckily, if I practically run, I can make it over to the nearby Westfield shopping center for a special treat for myself. I visit T2 Tea and sample all four of the teas they have on display that day and have a chat with the friendly ladies who work there. And then I do a fast-walk to get back to ballet to pick up my daughter.

As it turns out, my daughter also likes to sample the teas at T2 Tea, so before the holidays I started going to T2 before ballet class so she could try the teas too, and I sat in the lobby area of the ballet studio and read magazines while she was in her class. They only have a handful of magazines and always the same ones, but I did find an Australian Women’s Weekly magazine (from March 2009!) that I hadn’t seen before and flipped through the recipe section. I found some beautiful mocha cupcakes and read the recipe for them. I was immediately intrigued by it because it used real melted chocolate, almond meal and buttermilk.