Apple Crumble

Apple Crumble is one of those simple, quick and no fuss desserts to make. So simple in fact that you will only look at the recipe once and it will be in your culinary repertoire for life. The best part is that you can make your own additions to the dish or change it. It is simple as stewed fruit and crumble mix.

Apple Crumble

6 Granny Smith apples (peeled, cored and cut into 8ths)

Small amount of water

1 tablespoon sugar

4 tablespoons sifted plain flour

2 tablespoons butter or margarine

Rolled Oats

Ground Cinnamon

Brown Sugar

Place cut apples in a saucepan with a shallow amount of water and 1 tablespoon of sugar, cook on a medium low heat until the apples have become soft and are at the consistency of stewed apples. Taste to check if you need to add more sugar. Place the stewed apples into a baking dish.

To make the crumble mix, place sifted flour and margarine/butter in a bowl and using your fingers rub the margarine/butter into the flour to form crumbs. Add in rolled oats, ground cinnamon and brown sugar and mix well to combine. Cover the stewed apples with the crumble mix and bake in a moderate oven until the crumble mixture has turned golden brown.

Serve hot with custard.

*My Notes*

Don't be afraid to use you hands when making the crumble mixture, it will help everything to be mixed well together especially the brown sugar. I don't have measures for the oats, cinnamon or brown sugar because I normally just eyeball the amount when making it, you will know when there is enough for your liking.

FaB fish and burger grill

 

 I always walk past FaB on my way to work and it always seems to be buzzing with customers. Last night it was no different when I went there for dinner. As the name suggests its menu offers fish and burgers. The burger menu is impressive and each burger is named accordingly. The fish part of the menu is smaller, along with the sides, kids and dessert selection, but there was no short comings with the drink menu. The main focus of FaB is their burgers. I had the Mary burger (Herbed Lamb, Lettuce, Tomato, Grilled Haloumi, Capsicum Relish, Aioli) all of the flavours worked well together and the lamb was tender and juicy and along with a shared side of chips and aioli it made for a very filling casual meal, making it difficult even to get through a quarter of my Bread and Butter Pudding with caramel sauce and ice-cream for dessert. I just wish now that I took a photo of it, but I am sure that I will be back there soon enough and will remember to take my camera with me to do so. So I am sorry that there are no photos at this time.

FaB offers customers casual dining with a choice of indoor or outdoor undercover seating. Take-away is also available.

FaB is located at The Barracks, Petrie Terrace.

Butternut Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Couscous

This is such a simple and tasty accompaniment to go with either lamb, chicken or fish, or even eaten by itself as a salad. This is my own variation on recipes I have come across, after all that is what cooking is about, using a recipe as a blue print and changing it to make it work for you.

Butternut Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Couscous

Butternut Pumpkin
Sweet Potato
Coriander seeds ground
Cumin ground
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Couscous
Vegetable Stock
Raisins
Fresh Coriander
Butter/margarine

Peel and cube pumpkin and sweet potato, season with ground cumin and ground coriander. Coat with a small amount of olive oil and toss. Place on an oven tray and roast for an hour in a 180 degree oven.

Bring stock to the boil then stir in the couscous, cover and allow to stand for 2-3 minutes. Add butter/margarine and heat again on a very low heat for 3 minutes while stirring with a fork to separate the grains.

Gently stir through the vegetables, raisins and chopped coriander.

*My Notes*
The quantity for this recipe very much depends on how much you need to make, that is why I haven't included amounts. When cooking your couscous follow the instructions on the packet, but it is generally the same amount of liquid to couscous, so 1 cup of couscous use 1 cup of liquid. I find that using two forks and using a tossing motion works best to separate the grains.

Oven-roasted tomato and capsicum soup

It is a few days until Winter officially arrives and already the temperature has dropped making it perfect to get into the kitchen and cook some winter favourites. This soup is one of them, and even though it seems like a lot of work, it is totally worth it in the end. This recipe is from the Super Food Ideas Winter Favourites cookbook (2001).

Oven-roasted tomato and capsicum soup

8 tomatoes halved

2 red capsicums, halved and seeded

1 sweet potato, peeled and sliced
2 tbls olive oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed

4 potatoes, peeled and rougly chopped

2 Spanish onions, rougly chopped

4 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1 sprig rosemary

basil leaves to taste
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup natural yoghurt
15g prosciutto, grilled

1. Bake tomatoes, capsicum and sweet potato brushed with half the oil in a moderate 180 degree oven for an hour.
2. In large saucepan heat the remaining oil, saute garlic, onions and potato for 3-4 minutes.
   Pour stock over vegetables, stir in rosemary, basil and seasonings.
3. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer covered for half an hour or until vegetables are very tender.
4. Drain excess oil from roasted vegetables, add to stock and puree mixture with a hand blender or in batches in the food processer.
5. Reheat before ladling into serving bowl. Top with a dollop of yoghurt, a slice of prosciutto. Serve with crusty bread.

 *My Notes*

If using a hand blender to puree the mixture don't be too concerned if there is rosemary that hasn't been blended or tomato or capsicum skin, it adds to the texture of the soup.

Bacon works just as well as prosciutto and sour cream can be used instead of natural yoghurt. If you don't want to use yoghurt or sour cream try using grated parmesan cheese. Garnish with either a few chives or a sprig of rosemary.

Bangers and Mash with a twist

Normally it is mashed potato, peas, sausages and onion gravy that makes up the typical Bangers and Mash meal in our house. However seeming it was the week of the Royal Wedding of Will and Kate I thought that I would put a bit of a twist on the meal, with mashed sweet potato, broccoli and cauliflower and sausages with a onion and tomato gravy.

Mashed Sweet Potato

Peel and dice sweet potato, cover with water and bring to the boil until the sweet potato is fork tender. Drain and mash sweet potato, add a small amount of butter or margarine and milk and mix in until you get a smooth-ish consistency, don't over work the potato. Add ground coriander and ground cumin to taste.

Sausages with Onion and Tomato Gravy

Brown sausages in a pan, once browned add sliced onions and allow to soften, add in diced tomato and allow to soften. Add in two tablespoons of traditional gravy mixed with one cup of water to the pan and allow to thicken, stir often, the gravy at this stage will be very thick. Once thicken add extra water (a little under half a cup) to thin out the gravy but not so that it is going to be runny, add a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce and allow to simmer until the sausages are cooked through, this should be about ten minutes, stir every so often to prevent a skin from forming on the gravy. If you find the gravy is to thick just add a little extra water.

Serve with the mashed sweet potato and steamed broccoli and cauliflower.

ANZAC Biscuits

I love making these biscuits as they are simple and one of the first biscuits I learnt to bake. The age old question is how do you like them, crunchy or chewy? I have always preferred my ANZAC biscuits to be chewy. I have always used the same recipe from The Australians Women's Weekly The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits , and have found to ensure that they come out chewy is to add a little extra liquid and to keep an eye on them during baking, so as not to over cook them.

ANZAC Biscuits

1 cup rollled oats
1 cup plain flour
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup coconut
125g butter or margarine
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon boiling water

Combine oats, sifted flour, sugar and coconut. Combine butter and golden syrup, stir over gentle heat until, melted. Mix soda with melted butter/syrup mix and stir into the dry ingredients, add the boiling water and stir in. Place tablespoonfuls of mixture on lightly greased oven trays (I just line the oven trays with baking paper); allow room for spreading. Cooking in a slow oven 150 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Loosen while warm, then cool on trays.

^The above tend to produce crunchy ANZAC Biscuits... to make chewy biscuits I always add just a little bit more water to the mixture about a tablespoon and will bake them short of the 20 minutes, about 18 minutes or as soon as they have turned golden brown.

Pink Tinkerbell Cake

My niece has recently turned 3 and for her birthday she wanted a pink Tinkerbell cake. This would be my first ever attempt at making such a cake, so I was glad that this was a joint effort with my mum to accomplish such a task. In the lead up to making the cake we had to source various elements such as the food dyes, fondant, cake board which required trips to the cake supply stores. Then it was time to make the cake...

The Cake

For the cake we used two 23x4cm round butter cakes. Butter cake gives a firm foundation for decorating. The cakes need to be made a day before you need to decorate them as they are much easier to ice and decorate. You can either use a packet mix or can make your cake from scratch.

Butter Cake

125g butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup castor sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1/3 cup milk

Have butter at room temperature, beat butter with vanilla until light and creamy, add sugar, beat until light and fluffy, add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in half the sifted flour with half the milk, stir until combined. Add remaining milk and flour and stir lightly, then beat lightly until mixture is smooth. Spoon into greased tin, bake in a 180 degrees C oven until cake is golden, cooking times will vary depending on tin and ovens. The cake is cooked when the sides of the cake are just starting to shrink from the side of the tin and a skewer, when inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Decorating

We purchased white fondant "plastic icing" and coloured it with pink food colouring to the desired shade of pink we wanted, we also did the same for the green fondant for the flowers. It is very simple to dye fondant, it just takes some time as you have to work in the colour slowly until you reach your desired shade. Just remember you can always add colour, you can't take colour out.

Once we had filled the cake with vanilla butter cream and strawberry jam and iced the cake we laid the rolled out fondant over the cake and smoothed it out.

The Tinkerbell was created by using a tracing from a clip art image, we pin pricked the outline onto the cake and piped the outline using white royal icing, and filled in the image using coloured royal icing. White edible glitter was used on Tinkerbell's wings.

The flowers were cut out of green and pink fondant and place on the cake. To make the fondant stick use a very small amount of water.

Green and Pink Fondant Flowers



Pink Tinkerbell Cake