FFwD - Beef daube with carrots & elbow macaroni

This week's FFwD recipe is Beef [cheek] daube with carrots & elbow macaroni.  There are no cheeks here - just beef.

This was absolutely delicious, and a complete meal in a pot:

 

 

 

 

To see what the other FFwD cooks thought, visit the LYL section of the website.

Daring Bakers - November - Twelve Days of Cookies

It's time for November Daring Bakers.

Holiday season is the time for sharing and Peta of Peta Eats is sharing a dozen cookies, some classics and some of her own, from all over the world with us.

I am very time poor at the moment, so I only made one of Peta's 12 cookie recipes, and the simplest one I could find.  My choice was the Foaming Milk Cookies.  Peta explains:

Foaming Milk Cookies are an old family recipe from my mother in-law, perfect for the allergy sufferers. There are no eggs in the recipe. I have made these with water, juices and a variety of milk substitutes. I have used butter and margarines. I have used gluten free, rice, nut and coconut flours. I have added spices, nuts, dried fruits and chocolate chips. This recipe always works.

Even better, they take 10 minutes to prepare, 1 hour to freeze while you go off and have a life, and 10 minutes to bake.  What could be easier?

The dough was very soft, but froze into logs well.  I rolled my logs in red sanding sugar to make them festive with as little effort as possible.

Here is te recipe for those who are interested in making these cookies:

Ingredients

1½ cups (340 gm) (12 oz) sugar
½ cup (120 ml) milk
4 cups (560 gm) (20 oz) all-purpose (plain) flour
1 cup (240 ml) (225 gm) (8 oz) softened butter
1 teaspoon (5 gm) bi-carbonate soda
2 tablespoons (30 ml) hot water

Directions

1. Preheat oven to moderate 350°F/ 180°C/gas mark 4.
2. Rub the butter into flour until it looks like fine breadcrumbs or blitz together in a food processor.
3. If you use your food processor tip the flour and butter into a metal bowl.
4. Melt the milk and sugar together.
5. Dissolve the bi-carbonate soda into the hot water.
6. Add to the milk and sugar and mix quickly into the flour/butter until well combined.
7. The mixture will be runny but it will firm up as it cools.
8. When the dough has cooled roll it out to 1/5-inch (1/2-cm) thick and cut out with the cookie cutters or roll into logs and freeze for ½ - 1 hour until firm and cut it.
9. Place on greased trays and bake in a moderate oven for 10 – 15 minutes or until golden.
10. Allow to cool slightly on the tray and then move to cooling rack.

Thanks to Peta for hosting us this month.  To check out many other Christmas cookies, view the slideshow in the Daring Kitchen website.

FFwD - Herbed Olives

This week's French Friday with Dorie recipe is Herbed Olives.  Just like it says on the tin, this recipe involves macerating olives in herbed oil that you make yourself.  Flavours include coriander, fennel, rosemary, thyme, garlic, chilli, pepper, salt and bay.  I didn't have fresh seeds, so I used the crushed variety instead.  I used a mixture of black and kalamata olives that I had in my fridge.

If you can see the olives in my photo, you are doing better than me.

I have no idea what these olives taste like, as they are meant to macerate for at least 8 days before being eaten.  I only just made mine, so I won't know for a while yet.  However, if the smell coming from the pan in which I made the oil is anything to go by, these will taste fabulous!

To see some more herbed olives, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website.

WWDH - Roast Vegetable Frittata

This week's Wednesday with Donnay Hay recipe, chosen by Chaya, is Roast Vegetable Frittata, from Modern Classics I or online.

 I was having a dinner party, and one of my guests was vegetarian, so this frittata turned out to be a delicious choice for the main course, served with a bean salad and a tomato bocconcini salad:

To sse what Chaya and Margaret thought of this dish, visit their websites.

BWJ - Best Ever Brownies

For Baking with Julia this week, we were assigned Best Ever Brownies.  Our host was Monica of A Beautiful Mess. Now, I am a little cynical about recipes claiming to be the best ever - that is a pretty broad and subjective claim.  I am not sure that these brownies are "the best ever", but they are pretty good.

I made mine with the proper chocolate for the first time ever, courtesy of my US trips:

As a heads up, "unsweetened" and "bittersweet" chocolate are not the norm in Australia, hence my chocolate came from the Ghirardelli store in The Great Mall, Milpitas, CA.

I probably baked my brownies a smidge too long (~30 minutes), as they were fudgy rather than gooey inside, but this was good - I could not imagine that the critical audience that I have to deal with would have appreciated "gooey" and would instead have interpreted it as "underdone".

To see what the other BWJ bakers thought of these, visit the LYL section of the BWJ website.

FFwD - Goats Cheese Mini Puffs

Friday has rolled around again, and yes, it is French Friday with Dorie time.  This week's recipe was Goats Cheese Mini Puffs.  Luckily, I had a dinner party last weekend, so I had plenty of helpers to eat these puffs.

Basically, this recipe involves making choux buns and filling them with a goats cheese-based filling.  I didn't have any cream cheese, so my filling was 150g goats cheese, some chopped fresh chives (in lieu of herbed goats cheese), and enough cream so that the filling was smooth when beaten together with an electric mixer.

Et voila - you end up with a delicious little savoury that is so good, it is difficult to stop eating.

To see some more of these, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website.

Have a good weekend.  

Betty's of Harrogate Christmas Pudding and Mincemeat

This year, I had not so much a stir-up Sunday but  stir-up Tuesday on the Melbourne Cup public holiday in Melbourne.  As well as a Christmas cake, I made a Christmas pudding and mincemeat using recipes from Betty's of Harrogate published in The Guardian here.

This was a bit of risk taking, because I have never heard of Betty's of Harrogate.  However, the illustrations of the Christmas pudding and cake were so good that I decided to give it a burl.

And boy, was it worth it - I was rewarded with the handsome pud at the top of this post, albeit after 5 hours of steaming. After last year's disasters, I was ecstatic.

I have also used the Betty's of Harrogate  recipe for mincemeat in the same article:

Tim says he loves fruit mince tarts, so I have made this mincemeat in the hope that it will mature nicely and be the perfect basis for some fruit mince tarts. 

I am so excited that Christmas is coming - I can't wait to get stuck into the rest of my Christmas baking.