AFAM October - Peach/Nectarine: Peachy keen muffins

Peach muffin
Originally uploaded by Cakelaw

A Fruit a Month is a blog even which focusses on food featuring a new fruit each month. This month, Mansi of Fun and Food is hosting A Fruit a Month, and the fruit in focus is peaches or nectarines.

My fruit of choice is the delightfully fuzzy peach. Unfortunately, peaches are not yet in season in Australia, so I have used canned peaches in juice and peach yoghurt (peach melba to be exact!).


I have chosen to make muffins which are "peachy keen" because not only are they light and delicious, they are also low in fat. There is no oil or butter in them, with the fat content coming from low fat yoghurt and a single egg.

The recipe is as follows:

1 1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 cup low fat peach yoghurt (I used Ski Delite Peach Melba)
1/3 cup apple puree (or in my case, apple and pear puree!)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon almond essence
1 1/2 cups canned peaches, drained and chopped

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Spray a 12 hole muffin tin lightly with cooking spray or oil. Sift flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda into a bowl, and stir in the sugar.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the yoghurt, egg and essences. Pour into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Fold in the peaches and spoon into the muffin tin.

Bake for 25 minutes or until cooked when a skewer is inserted. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out to cool completely on a wire rack.

Thanks to Mansi for hosting AFAM, and I look forward to the roundup!

Postscript: You can find heaps of innovative peachy recipes in the roundup, which is here.

Garden Cook - Cranberries: White chocolate and cranberry cookies

White chocolate and cranberry cookies
Originally uploaded by Cakelaw

The theme for this month's Garden Cook blogging event, hosted by Paulchen's Foodblog, is Cranberries.

There are so many great recipes featuring cranberries that I had a hard time choosing which one to make this time around. I settled on a recipe for White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies by Bill Granger (of Bill's Restaurant, Sydney and some fun Macleans toothpaste ads here in Australia) published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 17 October 2006.

I liked the sweetness of the cranberries and white chocolate chunks against the earthiness of the oats and brown sugar in these cookies. The recipe is as follows:

150g softened butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 lightly beaten egg

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

1 cup plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

pinch of salt

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup white chocolate chunks

2/3 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth. Fold in the sifted flour, baking powder and salt, then finally, add the chocolate, oats and cranberries and stir until combined.

Roll teaspoonfuls of mixture into balls and place on greased and lined baking trays, then flatten with a fork. Bake for 15 minutes or until a pale gold. Cool on the trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

These cookies don't spread much during baking, so it is important to flatten them to the desired thickness before baking. Otherwise, these cookies were really easy to make, and would be delicious with a cup of tea or coffee for a morning or afternoon tea treat.

Thanks to Paulchen for hosting this month's Garden Cook event!

Postscript: The roundup can be found here.

Chocolate chip cookies

Chocolate chippies
Originally uploaded by Cakelaw

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I have missed you terribly since you left Lock Willow. Although my head tells me that I should know better, thoughts of you continue to haunt me.

I miss your voice, your piercing eyes, your stripey shirts, your cheeky grin and your quirky sense of humour. Lock Willow is nowhere near as fun now that you are gone.

Mrs Semple allowed me to bake yesterday. Knowing that you like chocolate chippies, I decided to bake my own chocolate chip cookies, even though you are not here to enjoy them. The heavenly aroma from these biscuits enveloped the whole kitchen, and it was so tempting to eat two (or three!) myself. They were soft, sweet, chocolatey and ever so good, and everyone at Lock Willow enjoyed them.

You told me once that you can bake. Just in case you feel inclined to try these biscuits yourself one day, here is the recipe:

2 cups self raising flour
pinch of salt
180g melted butter
1 lightly beaten egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 cup dark chocolate chips (or chopped chocolate)

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

Sift flour and salt into a bowl and set aside. Mix the melted butter and sugars together, then beat in the egg and vanilla essence. Fold through the flour and chocolate chips. Drop teaspoonfuls of mixture onto greased baking sheets, and bake for 15 minutes. Cool biscuits for 10 minutes on the trays before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

I hope you get a chance to try these biscuits some day Daddy - I am sure that you'd enjoy them.

Yours affectionately

Judy 'Cakelaw' Abbott

(with apologies to Jean Webster)

Chicken tagine with potatoes and olives

Chicken tagine with potatoes and olives
Originally uploaded by Cakelaw

I love Moroccan food, with its rich spices, luscious fruit and flavoursome meat. One of my favourite restaurants is Souk in London, which serves delicious Moroccan food, and creates a great atmosphere with its cave-like interior, scatter cushions, belly dancers and even hookahs (the latter of which I rejected).

Last weekend, I tried out a new Moroccan recipe - tagine of chicken with potatoes and olives. I am unsure how authentic it is, but it is certainly good. It involves braising 600g of chicken, then adding 2 bay leaves, 2 grated onions, salt to taste, 1/2 teaspoon tumeric, and 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger and simmering on low heat for 30 minutes. Next, add 800g diced potatoes (skin on is fine), top up the water and continue to simmer until the potatoes are soft. Finally, during the last 5 minutes of cooking, add two sprigs of fresh thyme, a handful of torn fresh coriander leaves and 12 chopped black olives and season with pepper.

Verdict - delicious!

Pie in the sky - Waitress

If you like baking or eating pie, or love a good chick flick, then I highly recommend that you see Waitress. I drooled through a lot of this film (figuratively speaking!), as the central character, Jenna (played by Keri Russell from Felicity), works in a pie diner and invents highly creative pie recipes with even more creative names, such as "Kick in the Pants Pie" (cinnamon custard) and "Marshmallow Mermaid Pie" (lots of marshmallows!).

You can only cringe in horror every time that Jenna's husband, Earl, hits the screen, as his jealous, childish, violent nature traps Jenna in an unhappy marriage from which you pray she will somehow escape. Jenna's relationship with her obstetrician, Dr Pommeter, was also rather cringeworthy - however, it forms an important part of the plot, as Dr Pommeter gives Jenna some flashes of happiness and reason to hope.

With all the luscious fruit, rich chocolate and smooth custard in this film, I was craving pie (or any other food!) for most of this film.

The visuals and dialogue in this film are a treat, and I highly recommend it.

Chocolate and zucchini cake

I tried another recipe from the beautiful Chocolate & Zucchini recipe book by veteran food blogger, Clotilde Dusoulier, for the occasion of another colleague's (Luke's) birthday. I thought it only fitting that I tried the title recipe, Chocolate and Zucchini Cake (which can also be found here on Clotilde's blog). It sounded quite delicious, as it contains both cocoa and chocolate bits, and to my mind, the use of grated zucchini in a cake is intriguing rather than off-putting.

As Clotilde promised in her introduction to this recipe, it produced a moist, deeply chocolatey cake. Personally, I liked it. However, I know that at least one of my colleagues, Julien, did not like this cake - he described it as "interesting", and when pressed, as "not his thing". Another colleague, Marian, described it as "OK". No-one raved about this cake, so to some extent, I take this as the barometer of how my baking is received.

Don't let my experiences put you off trying this recipe - it does produce a moist chocolatey cake, and I am not sure why it was not as well received as some of the other chocolate cakes that I have made. I would be interested in hearing from anyone else who has made this cake what they thought of it.

Coffee and ricotta sponge

This week it was also Lee's birthday at work. Lee is trying to lose weight, so I thought that I would bake a low fat cake option for him so that I did not tempt him away from his weight loss program. My choice, coffee and ricotta sponge, was a little experimental. However, it was surprisingly well received.

This cake consisted of two layers of coffee flavoured sponge, filled with low fat ricotta cheese flavoured with honey and brandy, and iced with coffee flavoured icing.

The recipe is as follows:

3/4 cup plain flour
2 tablespoons instant coffee
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar

175g low fat ricotta cheese
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon brandy

1 3/4 cup icing sugar
2 teaspoons coffee essence
1 tablespoon cold water 1 teaspoon cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin.

Sift the flour and instant coffee together and set aside. Beat the eggs and sugar together until thick. Gently fold the flour mixture into the egg mixture, then pour the cake batter into the prepared cake tin. Bake the sponge cake for 30 minutes or unbtil cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool on a wire rack.

Cut the cake into two equal layers. Mix the ricotta, honey and brandy together until smooth, then spread on the bottom cake lawyer and place the top cake layer on top.

Mkae the icing by mixing together the icing sugar and coffee essence with enough water to make an incing of spreadable consistency. Spread 3/4 of the icing over the top of the cake. Mix the remaining icing with the cocoa powder to make mocha icing. Place the mocha icing in a piping bag and pipe a decorative pattern on top of the cake.

Serve and enjoy!