The Psychadelic Lamingtons

I decided early on today to try and make lamingtons, however it was the usual story when I went to the cupboard to check for all the ingredients and I was missing about 1 cup of the required 2 cups of coconut. When I got to the shops I discovered bright blue and pink coloured coconut(see previous post about this product) and thought I would use these to be a little different.

Recipe:

Lamingtons

Ingredients:

6 eggs

2/3 cups of caster sugar

1/3 cup cornflour

1/2 cup plain flour

1/3 cup self raising flour

2 cups dessiccated coconut ( or 1 cup of pink and one cup of blue)

Chocolate Icing:

4 cups icing sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

15g butter melted

1 cup milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160 degree celsius. Grease a 20cm by 30cm lamington tray  and line with baking paper.

2. Beat eggs in a large bowl with electric beaters for about 10 minutes or until thick and creamy, gradually add sugar, beating until dissolved between additions.

3. Triple sift the dry ingredients and then fold into the egg mixture.

4. Spread mixture into the pan, bake for 35 minutes.

5. Make the chocolate icing by mixing all the icing ingredients together in a bowl. Place the coconut into a medium bowl  (if using two different colours leave each colour seperate).

6. Turn the cake immediately out of the pan onto baking paper covered wire rack to cool.

7. Cut the cake into even squares. Dip each piece of cake into the icing and drain off the excess and then roll in the coconut. Place lamingtons on a wire rack to set.

New Product Love - Fruit For Life Colour Fusion Coconut

Whilst shopping at my local IGA today I came across a product I havn't seen before: Fruit For Life Colour Fusion Coconut in electric blue AND bright pink! I was so excited I bought both and now need to find recipes that I can use them in.

The listed ingredients for the electric blue coconut are: coconut(100%), colour (133), and the listed ingredients for the pink coconut are: coconut(100%), colour (122). On the front of the packaging they say they are preservative free. The packages are 130g comprising of thirteen 10g  servings (not individually wrapped). Each portion contains 297kJ, less then 1g  protein, sugars and dietry fibre. It lists 6.6g of fats, 6.2g of which are saturated fats.

Little Caesar's Pizzeria - Dinner With Friends

For my birthday this year I went to Little Caesar's Pizzeria in Leederville with a couple of friends before meeting more friends at a club.

My friends Emily and Brad introduced me to Little Caesar's sometime in September last year. They have this super funky menu with a variety of sweet and savoury pizza's. Some of the pizza's are named after local bands and radio shows and all are made with fresh ingredients.

On the Saturday night that we went there it was absolutely packed. The main negative with Little Caesar's in Leederville is that you can't book a table. We got lucky however when Brad spotted a couple who were finishing up and leaving.

We ordered 3 savoury pizza's and a sweet pizza. The Nathan and Nat, Greek Lamb and the Cinnamon Girl were our savoury pizza's. The Nathan and Nat pizza is named after a breakfast radio show on a local station called Nova 93.7. It is delicious, it has chicken, prosciutto, roasted red capsicum, pine nuts, mozzarella, roasted umpkin, cream sauce and lemon  as the toppings. I am not normally a red capsicum fan, but I didn't even notice that it was there until I just reread the menu to put the toppings list on here!

Cinnamon Girl pizza with Nathan & Nat pizza at the bottom.

Cinnamon Girl was also nice. It was a combination of savoury and sweet. The pizza toppings were cinnamon, chicken, sultanas, sweet potato, mozzarella, cream sauce and balsamic glaze. The cinnamon added an interesting flavour to the pizza and the balsamic glaze was lovely.

The Greek Lamb pizza was described by Lisa as "Kebab on a pizza" when she read the description. She was correct, however it didn't have that weird late night kebab after taste. The toppings were corrigin free range lamb, semi-caramelised onion, fetta, mozzarella, kalamata olives, rosemary and tzatziki. From the toppings list it looks more like a classy kebab on a pizza, given there is no garlic sauce or raw onion. It was quite delicious. I also think that the lemon wedge from the Nathan and Nat pizza ended up on the Greek Lamb pizza.

Greek Lamb pizza with the Cinnamon Girl pizza.

For our dessert pizza we had the Eskimo Joe. Eskimo Joe is a band that is local to Perth which is probably one of the reasons why there was a pizza named after them at this restaurant. This pizza was also delicious. The pizza topping include malt choc chip cookie mix, icing sugar and raspberry sauce with a huge dollop of vanilla ice cream on top. You definately need a knife and fork for this pizza as it would get very messy otherwise! Again, this pizza was absolutely delicious.

 Eskimo Joe pizza with a big dollop of ice cream, mmmmm

I would highly recommend the Little Caesar's Pizzeria. There are three across Perth (Leederville, Hillary's and Mundaring). On their menu they have several prize winning pizza's that are marked with a little star (it took us a little while to figure this out at the restaurant). But, I would reccomend either getting there really early or really late if you go to Leederville as on weekends especially it fills up fast and there are not a lot of tables. I would definately go to this restaurant again as I want to try more pizza's off their menu!

Little Caesars Pizzeria Leederville

127 Oxford Street

Leederville WA 6007

Ph: 9444 0499

Web: www.littlecaesarspizzeria.com.au/

*This restaurant also offers a take away option.

The custom birthday cake

After taking my birthday cake into work last Friday two of the ladies decided to commission me to make a cakes for events they have coming up. The first one is for a 62nd birthday on Friday and the other is for a 11 year old party in March.

The 62nd birthday cake is a three layer moist chocolate cake (made with my decadent chocolate cake recipe) with chocolate frosting between the layers and covered in a light green fondant with aqua blue accents.

Recipe:

Decadent Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups plain flour

1 cup castor sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup buttermilk

1 egg

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 150 degree celsius.
2. Place all dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and combine.
3. Combine all wet ingredients in a jug.
4. Pour wet ingredients in with dry ingredients and combine.
5. Place in premade cupcake tray, bake for 30 minutes or until cooked through (test by putting a skewer into the middle of the cake, if the skewer comes out clean it's ready)

For the icing I made prepared some light green fondant and aqua blue fondant. I evened all three cakes out and covered each cake in chocolate frosting.

Roll the green fondant out onto baking paper and smooth onto the cake, cutting off most of the excess and tucking the rest very carefully under the cake (if there is chocolate frosting under the fondant be extra careful not to get it on the outside of the cake). 

Roll out the aqua coloured fondant  onto baking paper and cut into a long ribbon shape. Smooth the aqua fondant around the bottom of the cake. Ball the aqua fondant back up and roll out onto the baking paper. Use three different sized circle cutters to cut out circle shapes and put onto the cake.

For this cake I then put a pre-prepared fondant bow onto the top of the cake and stenciled "Happy Birthday Chrys" onto the cake, iced it in blue and covered the letters in coloured sugar crystals.

The Emporer's Kitchen - Dim Sum Lunch

On the Saturday of my birthday I went for Dim Sum lunch with my parents at the Emporer's Kitchen in Leeming. I often refer to this restaurant as "My parents dim sum restaurant" as this is where they go whenever they want to take anybody out for dim sum.

We had a variety of dumplings and other dishes. As per usual when at an Asian restaurant the first thing ordered to hit the table was the green tea in a pot. Green tea is drunk during these meals as it aids digestion (try it next time you go to a restaurant that serves it).

My dad and I shared a plate of fried squid tentacles as well as a dish of steamed pork ribs (mum doesn't like either of these as she hates squid and doesn't like her chances of getting a rogue piece of bone). The squid tentacles are deep fried with a seasoning of salt and chilli.

Squid tentacles

We also had my favourite dish of pork and prawn dumplings. They are a mixture of pork mine and prawns held together by bean curd and then steamed with fish roe on top. These are also my mums favourite.

Pork and prawn dumplings with sambal oelek

We also had prawn and scollop dumplings, steamed pork and prawn bean curd skin rolls, rice noodle rolls with bbq pork, rice noodle rolls with prawn and custard tarts. I enjoyed the pork and bean curd skin rolls, however I much prefer the very similar Lo Bak that is not steamed. The rice noodle rolls with the bbq pork is nice, however I tend to not eat these often because they are hard to pick up with chopsticks. I didn't try the rice noodle rolls with prawns as I find the texture of the rice noodle to be a little slimey and unpleasant. The custard tarts are always delicious, the pastry is not overly sweet and is wonderfully flakey, the egg custard in the middle is sweet with a lot of yolk and only just set.

  

From l-r: prawn and scollop dumplings, steamed pork ribs, steamed pork and prawn bean curd rolls and cup of green tea.

Rice noodle rolls with bbq pork

Dim sum menu

The Emporers Kitchen is open daily for Dim Sum from 10am - 3pm and then again from 5pm - 10pm, but is shut on Tuesdays. It can get full quite quickly so it is recommended to go there early, especially on weekends.

Emporers Kitchen

Shop 1, 55 Farrington Road

Leeming, WA 6149

The Birthday Cake - part 2, assembling and decorating

On Wednesday I did all the preparation to assemble my birthday cake. Thursday night I put it all together and did the decoration.

I cut the tops off both cakes to make them flat before sticking them together with chocolate frosting and covering both cakes with chocolate frosting.

I dyed two more lots of white icing in yellow and orange. I then covered the cake in the yellow icing

*Helpful hint*

When covering a large cake with rolled icing, roll the icing onto baking paper to prevent it from sticking to the work surface. It also makes it easier to pick the icing up to cover the cake.

After covering the entire cake with the yellow icing I set it aside and rolled out the pink and orange icing onto a piece of baking paper. Cut shapes out of the fondant and place onto the main cake. I used three different sizes of flowers for this cake.

 After finishing the flowers I placed two strips of pink fondant icing approximately 1cm wide along the centre of the cake in a cross shape and made a decorative bow out of fondant to place on the cross point on the top of the cake.

 

The Birthday Cake - Part 1, making the parts

In the past 4 weeks I have moved house, had christmas, then new years and now it's my birthday. It seems like these things never end sometimes. But on the upside, it means I get to make cake and go out with friends (to eat pizza, review to follow). So this post is about my birthday cake.

The Background:
Where I work it is a courtesy to bring in a cake for your birthday for everybody to eat. The first year I worked there I bought a cake. I have not done that since then, there has been no need. Last year I made miniature cupcakes in both vanilla and chocolate cake with different little toppings on them. This year it is going to be one regular size cake that looks like a present. Although it will look quite cool, I'm feeling a little unoriginal as I have already made one before.

I first came across this recipe for chocolate cake when I was selling the "Blue Ribbon Recipes" cookbook at work last year. To help promote the book I was baking cakes and biscuits to give away to customers as a promotion. The chocolate cake alone sold almost a whole box of books.

The Recipe:
Ingredients:

3 tablespoons butter
1 cup self-raising flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons coconut
2 eggs

Method:

1. Melt the butter on the stove in a saucepan. 
2. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl.
3. Beat the eggs lightly then add the milk to the eggs.
4. Add the butter and egg mixture to the dry ingredients and beat for three minutes.
5. Bake in a moderate (150degrees celsius) for 30 minutes.

The Decorations:

For this cake I will be covering it with white icing coloured with yellow food colouring. Then I will be colouring white fondant icing with pink to make the "ribbon" and "bow" out of. I will also be colouring more white icing with orange to cut out some flower shapes to put on the yellow icing to make it look like wrapping paper.

I prefer to use Wilton food colouring as it is more concentrated, therefore less liquid and keeps the consistancy of the white icing better. But at the moment I have yellow and pink in Queen food colouring.

Colouring Fondant/White Icing.
Method:
To colour the fondant/white icing get a portion of the icing and place onto working surface (I use baking paper on top of a wooden cutting board usually).

 
Use a tooth pick to dip into the food colouring and poke into the icing.

Knead the icing until the food colouring is evenly distributed. Add more food colouring as you need to make the colour richer (wear gloves when doing this or you end up dying your hands whatever colour/s that you are dying the icing!)

And the finished coloured product

Part two soon to follow......