Quiches

Jon made these quiches last week, despite not having any cream in them, they were delicious. We used milk instead of cream and increased the amount of eggs. The shortcrust pastry was a recipe from Mark Bittman's website but it turned out too soft, due to a higher amount of butter compared to the flour. Inside are bacon, spring onions, tomatoes, onions, eggs and milk. Very nice for a picnic lunch.

Hungarian Pörkölt

We have been lucky to know a Hungarian couple, who are as food crazy as we are! Gábor and Eszter, this is for you! And many thanks for the cookbook, chili powder, pointers and techniques on cooking an authentic Hungarian pörkölt...hope I made you proud.

This pörkölt has no added water in it and is very flavoursome and intense, the entire family loved it! Very lovely with hot, cooked rice.

Tartiflette

My hubby decided to give this recipe a try today - tartiflette, which is essentially a savoury cake with bacon, cheese, onion and eggs. It turned out beautifully and just salty enough without the addition of extra salt, as bacon and Gruyere are already quite salty.

This will be our breakfast treat for the weekend...;-)

Trial and Error - Cornflake Cookies

Today's buzzwords are frugality and necessity. And oversight. Having some frosting leftover from yesterday's orange cupcakes, I decided to make some impromptu cornflake cookies with it. This was also due to the fact I had half a packet of cornflakes in the pantry that no one paid attention to for months on end. So I decided to create my own recipe...and learned from it.

The frosting had roughly 80g of butter, three tablespoons of icing sugar and some lemon juice. I added another two tablespoons of caster sugar, an egg, a splash of vanilla extract and mixed these till fluffy. Then gradually I put in flour and baby oats, one tablespoon at a time until I felt the batter could hold its shape. There were three tablespoons of flour and oats each. Lastly, I added one cup of crushed cornflakes and 1/3 cup of raisins for good measure. These were baked for 20 minutes at 175C. Also you noticed there was no raising agent involved, as I like to live dangerously...not really, I  forgot to put some in. So it would be nice to add one teaspoon of baking powder or baking soda into the flour.

However, my instincts were not in sync today and the flour to butter ratio was unequal; butter started to flow away from the baking pan and onto the oven floor. I even spilled some while removing the pan from the oven. Sigh...more cleaning to do. Good thing was, the cookies turned out alright, lovely crunch and aroma from the cornflakes and sweet, chewy goodness from the raisins.

First Blog Post and Orange Cupcakes

Hello everyone! Here is my humble blog, featuring my cooking and baking journey, which I hope will be an enjoyable and entertaining one!

This is my first posting, yay! Having stopped blogging for nearly two years, I was encouraged by another uber home baker, Emily, to begin a new one. And here I am.

I made orange cupcakes this afternoon, managed to squeeze some time in between cooking dinner and looking after my son. These babies have fresh squeezed orange juice and orange zest in them. Love the aroma that wafts out of the oven when they are baking. The frosting is a simple buttercream with butter, lemon juice and icing sugar...and please pardon the non-artistic frosting...I have yet to own a pastry bag...;-)