Chidi’s Blueberry Muffins

I recently finished watching all four seasons of The Good Place, a comedy series about the afterlife, on Netflix. It is funny, and each episode is only 22 minutes long.

My favourite characters are Janet, a cheery personal assistant, and Chidi, one of the humans who is in the afterlife.  To celebrate my finishing The Good Place, I wanted to bake something. As Janet does not eat, I decided to make blueberry muffins, which have a pivotal role in a number of episodes set in Australia, where Chidi is teaching moral philosophy at the fictional St Johns University. 

Chidi’s biggest problem is his indecisiveness, to the point where he has trouble choosing a muffin from the wonderfully named coffee cart, We Crumb From A Land Down Under. 

Source - Rock The Holy Grail 

Through various events, he becomes confident enough to choose a blueberry muffin each day. However, Chidi’s confidence is subsequently thrown into disarray when he is told that blueberry pickers are subjected to cruelty, which makes blueberry muffins against Chidi’s moral code.

 In honour of Chidi, I made these blueberry muffins from the Sarabeth’s Bakery cookbook (minus the streusel topping).   I only made 3 muffins, but the full recipe makes 10.

To make them, you will need:

1 orange

2/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup plus 1 tbspn milk

2 eggs

2 1/4 cups plain flour

1 cup light brown sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 cup blueberries

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease 10 holes of a muffin tin with butter.

Finely zest and juice the orange. You need 1/3 cup of juice.

In a small bowl, whisk together the oil, milk, eggs, juice and zest.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Add the blueberries to the mixture and fold in gently.

Divide the batter evenly between the 10 muffin tin holes, and bake for 10 minutes. Turn down the heat to 180 degrees Celsius and continue to bake for a further 15 minutes or until the muffins are cooked through when tested with a skewer.  Remove the muffins from the oven and turn out carefully onto a wire rack to cool.

Berry Breakfast Puddings

 

During the very long cold lonely winter here in Melbourne, I have been mostly eating porridge for breakfast. It was time to mix things up, so when I was sorting through a pile of supermarket magazines, my eye was drawn to a recipe for Berry Breakfast Puddings.

These breakfast puddings also contain oats, but  also a bunch of other super healthy things that together make for a bowl of deliciousness. Even better, they are naturally sweet, so you don’t need any sweetener.  It is also super quick and easy to make, and you make it the night before so your morning brain doesn’t have to panic about breakfast.

This recipe makes 2 serves - you can make more as you need.

You take:

125g fresh blueberries

1 banana

1 cup skim milk

1 cup Greek yoghurt

2/3 cup rolled oats

2 tablespoons chia seeds

1/2 teaspoon vanilla 

Put half the banana and half of the blueberries into a small food processor with the milk and yoghurt, and process until smooth.

Stir in the oats, chia seeds and vanilla. Divide between 2 bowls, cover and chill in the fridge overnight.

Serve topped with chopped up fruit or berries of your choice.

TWD - Olive Oil and Wine Cookies

 

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Olive Oil and Wine Cookies.  

Dorie said you had to use white wine but I was not going to open a new bottle of wine for the small amount required in these cookies.  Instead, I used the red wine that I already had open.  That is why my cookies are pink.

I liked these cookies - I did not have high expectations, but they are really quite nice.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website. 

Lemon Brownies with Winter Berries

A while back, Helen Goh published a recipe in Good Weekend magazine for Lemon Brownies with Winter Berries.  I kept the recipe to make, but it has taken me some time to get around to it.

I am glad that I did though - these "brownies" are lemony, buttery and juicy from the berries.

I used red currants that I had stashed in the freezer - they looked very pretty in this slice: 

To make Helen's lemon brownies, you will need:

200g plain flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

250g butter, diced

300g sugar

1 tablespoon lemon zest

100ml lemon juice

3 eggs, lightly beaten

120g fresh or frozen berries (not strawberries)

icing sugar for dusting

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius and line a 20cm square cake tin with baking paper, leaving an overhang on two sides to lift the brownies out of the tin.

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl and set aside.

Rub the lemon zest into the sugar until fragrant.

Place the butter into a medium saucepan and melt it,   then add the sugar and stir until the mixture us smooth and shiny.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and whisk in the lemon juice, followed by the eggs. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix to just combine.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared baking tin, and scatter the berries on top.  Bake for 45 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a skewer.

Remove the brownies from the oven and allow them to cool in the tin on a wire rack until completely cool.

Remove the brownies from the tin, dust with icing sugar, and cut into squares or bars as desired.  

Rayleen’s Wattleseed Date and Macadamia Cake

 For my recent birthday, I made Rayleen’s Wattleseed Date and Macadamia Cake from The Cook and The Chef.  This recipe was made by Maggie Beer for the bush food episode, and I vaguely remember that Rayleen is a lady she met in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

I was attracted to this recipe because the combination of ingredients sounded fabulous, and I wanted a birthday cake that wasn’t all buttercream frosting and fluffy white cake. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, but I wanted something different.

This cake is based on whipped egg whites, so it is like a large pavlova studded with chocolate, chopped macadamias, chopped dates and wattleseed (a coffee flavour). The wattleseed was the hardest ingredient to find - I eventually tracked it down at Source in Malvern (a big shout out to Erin, who helped me find it in the shop).

This is the cake pre-decoration with cream:

I halved the recipe and made it in a 6” tin. To enable me to lift it gently out of the tin (it is a delicate cake and I don’t have a small springform tin), I not only lined the base of the tin, but I put down cross-ways long strips to overhang the sides of the tin to use as handless lift the cake out.

The cake is decorated with whipped cream flavoured with wattleseed:

I was surprised at how rich this cake was - I think it was the chocolate:

I enjoyed the cake, but it was a little too rich for me. I gave some of the cake to my friend V’s partner - he said it was “good rich”, so I will take that as a tick of approval.

If you would like to try Rayleen’s Wattleseed Date and Macadamia Cake (full size), you will need:

1 1/2 cups castor sugar

8 egg whites

1/2 cup plain flour, sifted

120g dark chocolate, grated

1 cup finely chopped macadamia nuts

1 cup finely chopped Medjool dates

2 teaspoons ground wattleseed

Topping

350ml pouring cream

2 tablespoons sifted icing sugar

1 teaspoon ground wattleseed

For the cake, grease and line the base of an 8” round springform pan (or use my handle trick above for a regular pan, noting this cake is delicate and will collapse if you just try and turn it out). Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Put the egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer and whip to soft peak stage. Gradually whisk in the sugar, whisking until the sugar is dissolved and the whites form stiff, glossy peaks.

Switching to a rubber spatula, fold in the flour, dates, nuts, wattleseed and chocolate by hand.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared cake tin and spread out evenly.

Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes or until the cake is firm when lightly pressed on top.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool in the tin on a wire rack.

Just before serving, unmould the cake (gently), and whip the cream and fold through the sugar and wattleseed.

Serve slices of the cake with the cream on the side, or spread the cream on top before slicing.

Beef Goulash and Braised Cabbage

One of my more recent cookbook purchases is Just Add Love, by Irris Makler.  The byline is "Holocaust survivors share their stories and recipes".  The recipes come from Jewish women from all over Australia, and includes not just recipes, but the stories of the people behind them. It really is a fascinating and inspiring read.

As it is still quite cold in Melbourne, and I wanted to find a way to use the stewing beef I had in the freezer, I turned to this book for recipes.  I wasn't disappointed - Annetta Able, a woman of Czech origin, had contributed a recipe for beef goulash.  The goulash was thick and rich and hearty - perfect for a cold night.

I bought cabbage to go with the beef goulash, and Just Add Love has a recipe from Rita Ross for braised red cabbage that intrigued me because it contains apple.  I had a green cabbage - no matter - and a single Granny Smith apple, so this seemed like the perfect recipe for me.  Rita says that the juxtaposition of the sweet and sour make this braised cabbage, and I agree - I really enjoyed the freshness of the braised cabbage which resulted from the sweetness of the apple with the  tartness of lemon, both of which help to lift the cabbage out of the realms of the mundane.

To make Annetta's goulash, you will need:

1kg stewing beef, cubed

1 finely chopped red capsicum

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 finely chopped onions

2 tablespoons paprika

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup beef stock

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds

Heat the oil in a large pot and fry the onion until translucent.  Add the beef and fry until the beef is browned.  Add the paprika and salt and stir to combine.

Add the stock, capsicum, tomato paste and caraway seeds,  and bring the mixture to the boil.  Turn down the heat to a bare simmer, cover the pot, and simmer for two hours, stirring occasionally.  If you need more water, add it half a cup at a time, and check every half an hour to ensure that the goulash does not boil dry.  The aim is for all of the water to be absorbed into the sauce, so don't add too much.

The goulash is ready when the meat is soft and tender.  Adjust the seasoning as necessary.

For the braised cabbage, you will need:

1 finely chopped onion

1/2 cabbage, shredded (the recipe says red, I used green)

2 tablespoons vinegar

2  green apples, peel on, roughly chopped (I used one as I only had one)

rind of 1 lemon

juice of 1/2 lemon

1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds

salt and pepper to taste

Fry the onion in a large frypan until translucent. Add the cabbage and the vinegar to the frypan and stir to combine.  Add the lemon juice, apples, lemon rind and caraway seeds and mix well, and season to taste.

Cover the frypan and cook on low heat for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Before serving, take out the lemon rind.

I served the goulash and cabbage with mashed potato - a perfect accompaniment for me, but you could also serve with pasta, rice or nockerl, as suggested in the recipe.

Mum’s Blancmange

 

When I was a kid, my mum made a series of desserts on regular rotation, including apple crumble, rice pudding and lemon delicious. She made them all off the top of her head, without recipe. Another such dessert on regular rotation was blancmange, a type of custard. Sometimes Mum would leave it white, other times she would tint it pale pink.

It is difficult to get recipes from Mum because they are not written down. I eventually got the blancmange recipe from her over the phone.  Another difficulty with Mum’s recipes are that her measurements are not standard metric measurements - you have to know how Mum cooks to interpret what she means.

I am so happy to have the blancmange recipe and made it tinted dark pink (by accident) - it is just as delicious as I remember:

If you would like to try my Mum’s blancmange, you will need:

2 cups (500ml) milk

2 large metal tablespoons (~ 80g) sugar

1 metric tablespoon butter

1 1/2 large metal tablespoons cornflour, blended with sufficient water to make a thick paste

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1-2 drops pink colouring (if desired)

desiccated or shredded coconut, to decorate

Put the milk, sugar and butter into a small saucepan and heat until the butter and the mixture is just bubbling round the edges, not boiling.

While stirring the milk mixture continuously, add the cornflour paste, and stir over low heat until thickened into a custard (ie it coats the back of a spoon). If it doesn’t thicken sufficiently, make more cornflour paste and stir in.

Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla and colouring (if using).  Pour the blancmange into a small buttered dish, and sprinkle coconut on top to decorate.  Allow to cool to room temperature or chill before serving.