Jun 21
It just turned winter here in Sydney. Fellow Sydney residents will think I’m crazy for posting about popsicles when it’s so chilly outside, but my friends in the US have just seen the first of summer and will, I’m sure, welcome some recipes for popsicles! Read more
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.
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.
May 29
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
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.
Jan 31
One of the many things that I love about Australia is its native wildlife – kangaroos, emus, koalas, echidnas, bandicoots, wallabies, cockatoos and much more. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing some of these animals in their natural habitats while driving through the Outback in 1999 and 2002, and every day I hear the sound of cockatoos screeching past our windows. Australia is such a beautiful place with so many interesting and extreme places. I’m so glad to be living here.
Being a foodie, I also really love Australia’s native herbs and spices, such as wattleseed, lemon myrtle, mountain pepper and bush tomato, to name a few. I’ve never cooked with any of these native spices before but now that I’m here for good I would really love to experience these herbs and spices that you can only find in Australia.
Luckily, my husband grows a variety of plants in the garden, including a lemon myrtle tree. He picked some leaves from the tree earlier this week for my first experiment in baking with Australian native spices.
I thought I’d have to wait weeks for the leaves to dry, but I found a very helpful post from Simple Daily Recipes on how to dry basil in the microwave. It looked so easy and quick that I decided to try this on the lemon myrtle leaves.
Jan 9
Today has been a really hot day in Sydney; the temperature has reached nearly 95F. It’s a good thing I did all my baking yesterday, when it wasn’t so hot! We did do our taste-testing today, however. To our Cupcake Hero throw-down contestants, I congratulate you again, as well as commend you for your efforts in making these cupcakes. Both of them have extra steps that makes them both extra special.
For our vote-winner, the batica from Sugar Plum of Vanillastrawberryfields, we are required to use a fresh coconut and grate it down (which is a bit of work!) and then to let the cake batter sit for at least four hours. The recipe was a little hard to understand, mainly because it’s not made in a traditional manner, but this is what made it special. What we liked about it is that it is very unique and traditional. It was definitely a moist cake with a lovely coconut flavor. 2 out of my 5 taste-testers preferred Sugar Plum’s batica.
For our competitor, the coconut rough cupcake from Catie of Catie’s Cakes & Cookies, the extra steps were the preparation of the chocolate-coconut nests and the coconut malibu truffles. Making these two particular things is not an easy task when it is so hot; a lot of refrigeration was necessary! When all was done and everyone had messy fingers!, the taste-testers really liked the chocolate-coconut nests and the gooey-ness of the truffles. This is what made these cupcakes so special. So special in fact, that 3 out of my 5 taste-testers preferred Catie’s coconut rough cupcakes.
This means that our winner in the throwdown by just one vote is Catie of Catie’s Cakes & Cookies!
Congratulations Catie!
Once again, I want to also congratulate you again Sugar Plum and everyone else who entered their coconut cupcakes!
Cupcake Hero will now return to I Heart Cuppycakes, so stay tuned over there to see what the next Cupcake Hero theme ingredient will be. 
Dec 28
First of all, a big thanks again to I Heart Cuppycakes for letting me host this month! And another big thanks to everyone who entered their coconut cupcakes! They all look so delicious!
Take a look through the entries below and choose ONE favorite only and cast your vote in the poll to the right. Voting is open until January 2 at 11:59PM.
—Voting is now closed—
The Entries:
Coco LimeNut Cupcakes
by Catie of Catie’s Cakes & Cookies
Coconut Rough Cupcakes
by Catie of Catie’s Cake & Cookies
Put the Lime in the Coconut
by Sarah-Lyn of I Bake Cupcakes
Vegan Coconut Rum Apricot Cupcakes
by Dorothy of Fuzzykoala’s Caketastic Adventures
Snowball Cupcakes
by Alicia of The Red Deer
Brazilian Blush Cupcakes
by Rosemary
Snowball Cupcakes
by F_A of Seelensturm
Pina Colada Cupcakes
by Samantha of Sweet Remedy
Batica – A Gorgeous Rich Delicious Goan Portuguese Coconut Bolo
by Sugar of Vanillastrawberryspringfields
Coconut Cupcakes
by Christine of Whimsical Bakery
Nov 21
October’s Cupcake Hero finished on a somewhat dramatic note. In case you don’t know the story, catch up on this post at I Heart Cuppycakes. To sum it up, it ended in a tie between me and Samantha of Sweet Remedy. How we resolved that tie was left up to readers of I Heart Cuppycakes; a commenter suggested that one person receives the prizes and the other gets to host Cupcake Hero in December. So, I happily offered the prizes to Samantha as I am moving to Australia next week and thought it might be confusing about where to send prizes to, and now I get to host Cupcake Hero for this month! I am so excited!
After some serious thinking and a lot of suggestions, I decided that I’d like to see COCONUT CUPCAKES in December!
Mar 30
It’s a bit early for Easter, but I couldn’t resist making these nesting baby bluebird cupcakes from Martha Stewart – instructions here.
Mine are nowhere near as cute as Martha’s – they are very easy to make, but the hardest part for me was piping those tiny beaks. I don’t have a small leaf tip, so I made one from a Ziploc bag, reinforced with tape. Maybe that was my problem!
I did not use the vanilla cupcake recipe or the chocolate buttercream from Martha’s instructions. I used Billy’s vanilla cupcake recipe, and Martha’s basic buttercream recipe (both recipes divided in half). I’ve made Billy’s vanilla cupcake recipe before, but this is the first time I’ve got to taste them – I love them! I’ve been having a hard time finding a good vanilla cupcake recipe, but I really really like this one.
I would like to try to make these again sometime, they really are super cute (well, Martha’s are, anyway!) and I’d like to perfect the beak-piping technique!
Dec 10
Last night I went to my local women’s group cookie exchange. I was generally quite unimpressed with the cookies (no offense to any of those women who may be reading this, but I’m really picky!), but there were some yummy treats. Of course, I was a huge fan of the fudge I made with a Lindt coconut white chocolate bar swirled in. But I also really liked a friend’s Oreo truffles.
My fudge recipe is simple. It is the fudge recipe from this post. What I did differently was stir in a melted Lindt coconut white chocolate bar. That’s all! It’s so yummy! The fudge isn’t as smooth as regular fudge because of the very finely chopped coconut, which gave it a kind of strange appearance, but the taste of it made up for that!
I have seen Oreo truffles before, mainly on Bakerella’s blog (see here and here, for example) and my friend had made these Oreo truffles at last year’s cookie exchange. They are really yummy; the process of making them and the texture of the truffles are very similar to Bakerella’s cupcake pops and cake balls.
There are a few different methods to making Oreo truffles, but the easiest one is as follows.
Oreo Truffles
Ingredients
1 package (18-ounces) Oreo cookies, finely crushed
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
2 packages (8 squares each) Baker’s semi sweet chocolate, meltedMethod
Mix 3 cups of the cookie crumbs and the cream cheese until well blended. Shape into 42 (1-inch) balls. Place the balls in the freezer to firm up, about 10-15 minutes, as they will be easier to work with when firm.Dip balls in melted chocolate; place on waxed paper-covered baking sheet. (Any leftover melted chocolate can be stored in tightly covered container at room temperature and saved for another use.) Sprinkle with remaining cookie crumbs.
Refrigerate 1 hour or until firm. Store any leftover truffles in tightly covered container in refrigerator.
Tip: To easily coat truffles with the melted chocolate, add truffles, in batches, to bowl of melted chocolate. Then use two forks to roll truffles in chocolate until evenly coated. Remove the truffles with forks and allow excess chocolate to drip back into bowl before placing truffles on prepared baking sheet.
The truffles can look very beautiful if prepared neatly, as seen here!
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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