Last Chance

This is your last chance to enter the Easter Recipe Competition. Please don't be shy--send me your favourite Easter recipes ASAP for a chance to win a great prize!!!

Let Them Eat Cake Pops...

Probably about a year ago now, my sister sent me a link to the Bakerella website. The ideas were absolutely adorable, and there was one magical phrase that stuck with me: Cake Pop. The basic idea is that it looks like a lollipop, but is made out of cake. Adorable.

I remembered the cake pops, but didn't do anything about the idea until recently. My nephew's birthday is on St. Patrick's Day, so I helped my girls to bake him a birthday cake. They had great fun decorating it with LOTS of sprinkles. I sandwiched two layers
of cake with frosting in the middle as well as on top, so I leveled out the cakes by cutting off the excess cake (super easy by just cutting all of it to the height of the cake pan before removing it from the pan). This left us with some left over cake.

So I rcmembered cake pops, found some sticks, and started rolling the cake into balls. It worked well because the cake was still warm and so took its form easily. Also, the cake was very moist and kind of crumbly, so the consistency worked really well.

I worked loosely from a Betty Crocker recipe. It was easy and one-step though, so here's what I did.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda/bicarbonate of soda
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
1 cup water (room temperature)
1/2 cup milk (I used whole milk)
1 tbsp vanilla
5 oz dark chocolate, melted and cooled
2 eggs (room temperature)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Grease and flour 2 medium to large cake tins. (This recipe doesn't work well as "sandwich cakes"; it's better as a single, big, tall cake.)

2. Put all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer until it is smooth. Pour into cake tin.

3. Bake until an inserted butter knife comes out clean. Let cool, then decorated as desired OR let cool only until it is comfortable to handle, and then shape pieces of cake into balls around lollipop sticks.

I frosted the cake pops with a pretty simple chocolate buttercream. I beat together about 1 cup butter, 4 cups sugar, 2 tbsp vanilla, 2 oz melted and cooled dark chocolate, and 2 tbsp cold water until it made a smooth frosting that was easy to spread (make sure to taste test it and adjust as desired).

After giving the frosting time to stiffen, I covered the cake pops in cling film and then tied securely with ribbon. And voila, cake pops. Bite sized cake on a stick. Fantastic for when you want to be cutesy.

Contest for Beautiful Artwork

First of all, I should make clear that this is not my competition. This is a photo giveaway by Christine Armbruster. I've never actually met her or anything, but my sister (thanks Tonts) sent me the link to her blog and I LOVE her photography. So check her out. If you check her out soon-ish, you can enter this competition too. If you don't enter, cross your fingers for me that I'll win. Thanks.

Too Good For Pictures

The problem with sugar cookies is that everyone likes to make them, and nobody really likes to eat them. It's fun to roll the dough out and cut out shapes and then decorate them. Normally, though, we're left with loads of cookies that look fantastic, but sit on the counter for weeks until some one puts them in the bird feeder.

The other Saturday I was preparing a lesson for church the next day (I teach Sunday School). Miriam thought that I should bring cookies for my class, and both of the girls love helping me bake, so after I finished my preparations we made cookies. They wanted to use the cookie cutters, so we made sugar cookies. I wanted to make them more exciting, though, so I decided to make lavender sugar cookies.

It's very simple, but the results are impressive. I used my normal sugar cookie recipe, but I substituted lavender sugar for half of the sugar. Then, when we were decorating them, I ground up dried lavender flowers using a pestle and mortar, and added them to the icing. I wasn't sure if you would really be able to taste the difference, but it definitely added a delicious twist to a familiar food.

This recipe turned out to be too good for pictures. We ended up with a huge tray of cookies stacked about 5 deep, all cut into little people shapes and decorated. I thought that I would have plenty of time to take some great pictures of them, but I was wrong. The cookies were devoured within a day. They just seemed to disappear in my Sunday School class. So I'm very sorry that there are no pictures, but it has to be a good sign about the recipe when it is eaten too quickly to photograph.

Planning Spring Planting

The snowdrops and crocuses are in full bloom in our garden, and it's been raining for three days straight. This can only mean one thing...spring is on the way! This is the time to start planting & preparing your garden.

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We've been busy planning, preparing the vegetable patch and flower beds, buying seeds, and planting. They're very messy and you may or may not be able to read my handwriting, but I've scanned in a couple of pages from my notebook with the list of the things we have to plant and a rough sketch of the vegetable patch and how we're organizing it this year. Not everything goes in the vegetable patch, though--I'm sticking my artichokes in with my flowers in front of the house. This is the first time we've tried artichokes, and we have two varieties to plant, so I'm really excited about those. We're starting a lot of things off in little pots in the convervatory.

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So for everybody else out there who's busy weeding and planting and so forth, good luck! Happy spring everybody!

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Competition Reminder

I just wanted to remind everybody about the Easter Recipe Competition.

This competition is looking for the best Easter competition. It can be sweet or savoury, but must be vegetarian. Also, your chances of winning are better if you include pictures and an explanation of why it's an Easter recipe and not just a recipe.

The winner (and possibly runner-up) will be featured here on the website. Also, the winner will recieve a cookbook as a prize.

The deadline is April 1st.

Please either post your entries here on the site, or email them to liquid_trees@hotmail.com

Good luck to everyone and I look forward to your entries!

Our Most Delicious Idea Yet

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Some of my ideas in the kitchen turn out better than others. Some days I have great ideas for something to cook or bake, and it just doesn't work. Every once in awhile, though, we have just the right ingredients and a sprinkling of inspiration, and make something truly, mouth-wateringly extraordinary.

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This humble-looking pie is, in my opinion, our most delicious idea yet. So here it is: Plum Crumble Pie.
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Ingredients:
Pie Shell (I cheated and used a pre-made one)
Plums (We used a nice dark purple variety with firm, sweet flesh)
Rochester Organic Mulled Berry Punch
Ground Almonds/Almond Flour
Flaked Almonds
Oats
Brown Sugar
Cinnamon
Butter (room temperature)
Vanilla Extract
Flour (You can use wheat or white flour, or even an alternative wheat-free flour)
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1. Wash the plums, then halve them and remove the stones (you can leave on the skins). Then cook on a medium heat with a splash of the punch until soft, stirring regularly. [The punch is a mixture of juices and spices that adds a really rich flavour to the plums, but if you can't find Rochester punch or something similar, you can try adding spices to taste and a little juice or water.]
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2. Make a crumble topping. You can find exact recipes for this or play with the proportions, but I tend to just start adding things to the food processor and taste testing it. Mixing it in the food processor blends the butter through it nicely without ruining the consistency by making it too smooth. Add about 3 tbsp butter, 1/2 cup flour, 1 cup oats, 1/2 cup almond flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1 tbsp vanilla extract, as well as a sprinkling of cinnamon. Blend. Taste, and add more liquid/dry ingredients, sugar, etc. if needed. Then hand mix in about 1/2 cup flaked almonds.
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3. Put the fruit in the pie shell, then spread the crumble topping evenly over the entire top. Bake at 180 C (350 F) for about 1/2 hour.
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4. Enjoy! This is delicious served hot with cream, ice cream, or custard, or eaten cold (perhaps with vanilla yogurt for an indulgently delicious breakfast).
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The mixture of the almonds in the crumble topping creates an almost marzipan-y sweetness, but it is offset by the spiciness of the fruit. This is heaven in a pie shell.
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