Chocolate, Olive Oil + Sea Salt Cupcakes

Found this fantastic recipe at raspberri cupcakes. Super easy, and they are amazing!!

Baking Crazy!

Tiramisu, Chocolate Brownies, Honey Almond Slice, then Banana and Honey Loaf! If you want any of the recipes I have used, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email (: I've certainly baked my butt off this Winter Semester Break!

Red Velvet Cheesecake

After buying a couple of copies of Woolworths Good Food magazine, I'm hooked on it and it's recipes. It went straight on my (very late) Christmas list to Mum and Dad, and lucky me received a 12 month subscription! Woo Hoo!


Anyway, I truly recommend that you check out the mag - it is only $3.95 after all! And no, I'm not working on commission...or at all in fact haha :) Here's some pics of the Red Velvet Cheesecake I whipped up for our New Years Day BBQ lunch as dessert. Everyone loved it!!

 

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and New Year! xx

Homemade Mint Thins

The summertime is my baking season. My best friend and I have a little competition which he is less than fond of (even though deep down I think he relishes on the rivalry, although I will 'win' by default haha) affectionately referred to as 'The Bake-Off'. Once uni ends for the year, we both put our hand to various cake, biscuit, cheesecake and whatever other recipe we can find and hopefully impress, flaunt and most importantly terrify the muffin-tops off each other!


Well yesterday I put my hand to a Homemade Mint Thins recipe I found. They didn't exactly turn out looking like they were 'supposed' to, but I much prefer this 'Tegan version' (mostly because the biscuits are much bigger - hello hips!).

Here's the super easy recipe and some mouth-watering chocolatey photos..

Ingredients

Cookies

1 ½ cups flour

¾ cups unsweeted cocoa

¼ tsp baking soda

1 ¾ stick butter

1 cup sugar

3 tbsp milk

½ tsp vanilla

1 ½ tsp mint extract

Topping

1 cup chocolate chips

1 tsp mint extract

Method

Cookies

1. Mix together flour, cocoa salt and baking soda.
2. In a separate bowl, cream butter until smooth. Add sugar and beat for one minute.
3. Add milk, vanilla and mint. Beat for an additional minute. Slowly add the dry ingredients while still beating.
4. Once mixture is well-combined and resembles small pebbles, use your hands to form into a ball. Roll the dough into a log and wrap in waxed paper. Chill for 2 hours.
5. Slice into thin rounds and place on grease-proof paper. Bake at 180ºC for 12-15min.

Topping

6. Melt chocolate in bowl set in simmering water, and add mint.
7. Once cookies have cooled and become crispy, coat their tops in chocolate by dipping them or smearing with an icing knife (I had some trouble here - I'd advise melting the chocolate completely before adding the mint extract, rather than adding it and then melting).

(Recipe source: http://mingmakescupcakes.yolasite.com/)

Banana Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting

 

 

 

 

If you would like the recipe I go by, just let me know!

Viennese Fingers

If  you would like the recipe to these little lovelies, then just leave a comment and I'll get it to you :) It's super easy!!

 

 

Mini Lemon Meringue Pies

Here's my go at those Mini Lemon Meringue Pies I shared from Joy's blog not that long ago. I made them last night - I found that they were better this morning once the biscuit base had had a chance to harden/set in the fridge properly (of course I was too eager to try one warm last night haha! it was still a bit too soft). Something went wrong with the meringue though - it all melted and went soft instead of crispy in the oven. So I need to work on that for next time :) ...and believe me, there definitely will be a next time with the way that lemon filling tasted haha!

 

 

 

Banana Crumb Muffins

To celebrate the beginning of my semester break I decided to bake yesterday afternoon. Okay, I must admit that that was only half of my reason. My best friend had been boasting about his alleged "amazing Nigella Lawson's 'Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake'" he'd baked the day before, so of course I stepped up to the unspoken challenge, ready to trump his cake with my newly discovered muffin recipe - 'Banana Crumb Muffins'! I've shared the link for both recipes in the text above, and here is the full recipe for my delicious muffins - mine definitely trumped his cake :)

Ingredients

Muffin Mix

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 white sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup butter, melted (~80g)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Crumb Topping

1/4 cup white sugar
3 Tablespoons flour
1/8 cup butter, cubed (~30g)
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180'C. Prepare muffin tin with paper liners.

2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.

3. Mash bananas with sugar, egg and melted butter in a large bowl. Fold in flour mixture, and mix until smooth. Pour batter into prepared muffin tin.

4. In a small bowl, mix together the crumb topping. Liberally sprinkle it over the tops of the muffins while the batter is still raw. (I'm all for the CRUNCH factor :D)

5. Bake for 20-25min (mine took less - keep an eye on them, but you want them golden to caramelize the sugar in the crumb topping mixture), or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let them cool on a wire rack.

6. Lastly, and most importantly, ENJOY!

This has been entered into Lisa's 'Sweets for a Saturday' party! Check out the others' recipes on her blog. Just click this link.