Pumpkin Cupcakes - for Halloween!

We had a lovely time at a Halloween BBQ with friends this year!

We carved some pumpkins, which looked rather impressive when all lit up!

The pumpkin innards were put to great use on these delicious pizzas, expertly cooked on the bbq by Kara. 

Anita made us all individualised graveyard chocolate mousse!!

My contribution were these Pumpkin Cupcakes... the recipe goes a little like this.....

ingredients
1 cup cream
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
approx 500g butternut pumpkin (this weight was with the skin & seeds still attached)
approx 2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/2  teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon "apple cake" spice mix

first remove skin and seeds from pumpkin and chop the pumpkin into small cubes.

In a saucepan, place chopped pumpkin, and about half of the cream. add 1 tablespoon maple syrup and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon & 1/4 teaspoon "apple cake" spice (or just use some nutmeg, or whatever other spice you like).  Cook over a gentle heat until pumpkin is cooked - you need to puree it, so make sure it is well cooked.  When cooked, puree with a stick blender, or similar. set aside to cool.

When the pumpkin mix has cooled, get on with the rest of the recipe.....

Preheat oven to 180c

Combine remaining cream, eggs, sugar, maple syrup and spices and beat well.  Gradually add the flour and stir till well combined.  Stir through pumpkin puree.

Spoon mixture into cupcake trays lined with papers.  Bake in oven approx 20 minutes. But check on them as they may cook a little more quickly.

Let the cupcakes cool.

Then ice with the icing of your choice - I made a simple icing of icing sugar, margarine, a little maple syrup and cinnamon. And coloured it orange.

To decorate, I melted some dark chocolate and piped it into slightly dodgy looking shapes that vaguely resembled spiders.

baking - zucchini cake

Another way to use up excess Zucchini!!

I hadn't really considered using zucchini in something sweet, but I found this recipe on Taste.com.au (click to see the recipe), and decided to give it a try!  The result was a deliciously moist and fruity cake!  It was super simple to make, just mix everything together and bake!

a couple of notes -

• The 250g of zucchini mentioned turned out to be one large zucchini.  
• I am not a fan of raisins, so I just used 300g of sultanas instead of 150g of raisins & 150g of sultanas
• My loaf tin was longer than the one the recipe specified, and I found the cake was cooked after just under an hour.
• I needed a bit more icing, because I smoothed it over the sides instead of just letting it drip.

Pink Fried Rice

I have some lovely Bulls Blood Beetroot growing in the garden, so am using it up in as many ways as I can..... on this occasion I added it to my fried rice, resulting in pink fried rice!

To make the beetroot component, I simply chopped it into small cubes, and microwaved until soft, but not mushy in some soy sauce (a couple of teaspoons) and a squeeze of lemon juice.  This created beetroot in lovely pink sauce, which I stirred through my fried rice at the end!  (other things in my rice included zucchini, carrot garlic, onion, parsley stalks, peas, corn and tofu, oh, and some brown rice!)


(apologies for the kind of blurry photo...and it was pinker in real life :-) )


Janet had the same, minus the tofu and beetroot, plus some beef mince.

Zucchini and beetroot fritters - from the garden!!

 

How exciting is it to be able to make dinner that the majority of the ingredients were grown just outside in the garden??? Very very exciting indeed!

Our zucchini crop is doing quite well, and I had to thin out the beetroot in the patch, so the result was these fritters -

Ingredients
3 large zucchini
2 baby beetroot
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
fresh herbs (I had parsley, basil, thyme, rosemary & oregano)
2 eggs
3 tablespoons cottage cheese
4-5 tablespoons SR flour

In a food processor grate zucchini & beetroot. Put into a large bowl.

Then with the chopper blade, whizz up the onion, garlic, and herbs.  Add the eggs and cottage cheese and whizz till combined.

Mix this through the grated vegies in the large bowl.  Add the flour a couple of spoonfulls at a time.  You may need more, you may need less.  When the mix looks like it is not overly runny, I usually make a test fritter - fry in a hot frying pan with a little oil and see if the mixture holds together.  If its a disaster, add a bit more flour and try again!

If your test fritter is ok, continue to fry heaped spoonfuls of mix until browned on both sides.  I take the cooked fritters and put into a preheated oven so they don't get cold while I am making the rest.

I served my fritters with some tomato salsa (tomatoes were from the garden also!) made with chopped tomatoes, a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar, black pepper and oregano.

2011 Bridge To Brisbane // Results // tiktok results

2011 Bridge To Brisbane // Results // tiktok results

Fathers Day Lunch!

For Fathers Day, we took lunch to Mum & Dad's place, so the food had to be transportable, and, since we were off to a morning tea prior to lunch, it had to be pre-cooked.

I decided to give Pulled Pork a try.

I adapted this recipe from Not Quite Nigella

Since I do not have a pressure cooker, I used the oven. And majorly increased the cooking time!!
Pulled Pork
2kg Pork Shoulder (remove the skin and fat layer
1 onion
bunch of parsley
4 cloves garlic
1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon salt
good grinding of pepper
1 cup water

Fry onion, garlic and parsley stalks, and brown pork in the same pan (if you have a casserole dish that can go on the stovetop, use this, if not, you will need to improvise!).  Mix remaining ingredients and pour over/around pork.  Allow to come to a gentle bubble, then remove from stovetop and place in a 140c oven (put a lid on it).  Cook in the 140c oven for 6-7 hours.  Until pork is falling apart.  Then remove the meat from the sauce and pull it apart with a fork.  I found I had too much liquid, so only put some of it through the pulled pork.  This could be because I used 1 cup of water instead of the half in the original recipe.  Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve.  (or put in fridge, then transport to lunch the next day, reheat gently in microwave, sprinkle with parsley and serve!) Serve with fresh bread rolls and make pulled pork rolls!




We also had a delicious garden salad from Gina & Scott



and this potato salad which I made (simply potatoes and snow peas in a dressing made with half a bottle of potato salad dressing and the same quantity of greek yoghurt.)

For Dessert, I made @everydaycook's famous brownies (topped with toasted hazelnuts)and some cinnamon donut icecream to go with them....

the icecream recipe goes like this......

Ingredients
2 cups milk
3 cinnamon donuts
extra milk
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups cream

put milk and donuts into a saucepan and warm over a medium heat.  When hot, but not boiling, remove from heat and put lid on saucepan.  Allow to cool.  Strain milk through fine sieve so that no lumps are present.  Measure how much milk you are left with, and use extra milk to make amount back up to 2 cups.

Place the donut flavoured milk into a saucepan with the 3 eggs. Beat eggs and milk together well, stir in the sugar.  Stir constantly over a low to medium heat until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of spoon.    Cool.  Stir in the cream. Refrigerate until cold (overnight if you like).  I use an icecream machine to churn the chilled mix until frozen

Baking - Choc-choc chip cookies

I promised Janet I would bake some choc chip cookies, so after buying some choc chips, I decided to use the recipe on the back of the packet!  I made a couple of changes....

125g butter (soft)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup castor sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 egg
1 1/2 cups Self Raising Flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 packet Dark Choc Chips (I used Cadbury 230g packet) (recipe actually says to use 3/4 cup, but thats nearly the whole packet anyway)

leave butter out of fridge until soft!! Preheat Oven to 160 C, cream butter & sugars until light and fluffy, mix in vanilla and egg.  Stir in Flour & cocoa, add choc chips.  I needed to add a little water to the mix as I found it a bit too dry.

Place dessertspoonfuls (original recipe calls for teaspoonfuls - but I thought this was a little stingy!)of mixture onto trays lined with baking paper.  Bake in oven for 10-15 minutes.  Allow to cool on trays.

Enjoy!!