Harry's First Ballet Competition

In his last minute costume

With Saskia who was also doing her first competition

Over being paparazzi'd

One of the reasons I have been so busy in the last few months is that we have been doing a ton of preparation for Harry to go into the ballet competition circuit. Yes I admit it I am almost a fully fledged 'ballet mum'. I say almost because I know I will never be one of those overly intense, competitive and nasty-about-everyone-else types of ballet mum. Actually you can probably take away the intense thing..... Anyway Harry is a pretty committed dancer. It's his 'thing' and he is totally driven and passionate when it comes to dance. He does ballet, tap and jazz and loves every minute of it although his real passion is ballet. He practices pretty much every day and does it without complaint (mostly). He may not have natural talent (you know like those kids who don't have to practice and still look lovely) but he has enough so that with all the hard work he puts into it, he could, and is, amazing. He managed to get Highly Commended in both his categories so while there is still work to do, we were very pleased with his efforts and achievements. The loveliest thing about Harry during these competitions was that he was totally delighted to celebrate everyone else's success. This included those who did better than him or not as good as him. He was just thrilled to get something. I love that sort of sportsmanship and I think it will carry our baby far.

Well done our Pup we are so very very proud of you xxxxx

Salted Caramel Cupcakes

Baking for Nightshift- Chocolate Mocha Cake

More chocolate I know and there is still more to come. I loved this cake. It was light, full of flavour, not too coffee flavoured (I'm not too keen on too strong a coffee favour in my food) and the praline on top just completed the whole thing. This recipe came from the Foodtown magazine and is well worth making. Delicious!

Chocolate Mocha Cake
2 tsp coffee granules 
1 c warm water
1 3/4 c caster sugar
2 eggs
1 c buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 c flour, sifted
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 c cocoa, sifted

Icing
150 g butter, softened
1 1/2 c icing sugar
1/2 c cocoa sifted
1 tsp vanilla
2-4 Tbsp milk
1 tsp coffee, dissolved in 1 Tbsp water

Preheat the oven to 160C and line the base of a 20cm springform tin.

Dissolve coffee into the water and set aside. Place sugar, eggs, oil, buttermilk and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat until combined.

Fold in flour, baking soda, baking paper and cocoa. This is a runny batter. Pour into the tin. 

Bake about 50 mins (it may need a bit longer) until cooked. Cool in the tin.

To make the icing put the butter, icing sugar and cocoa into  mixer and beat until combined. Add the coffee, vanilla and enough milk to get the right consistency. 

Cut the cake in half and spread 1/3 icing onto the bottom layer. Ice all over the rest of the cake with the remaining icing. Sprinkle over the pistachio praline (this is optional).

Pistachio Praline
Place 70g pistachio nuts onto a baking paper lined baking tray. Place 1/2 c water and 1/4 c water into a small pot over a medium heat. Stir until the sugar has dissolved and bring to the boil.Boil until it goes a golden colour then pour over the nuts and set aside to harden. When it cools break it up, put it into a food processor and whizz up. Make sure you do NOT touch the hot toffee....unless you want 3rd degree burns....

Baking for Nightshift- Annmarie's Chocolate Brownie

I know I know I know! I say I'm not going to fall behind in my posts and then life happens and my blog suffers. It's not that I haven't been cooking or baking because I have done plenty of that carry on..... probably more than I should even say. I do have a fair few photos in my albums but now I have the added problem of trying to remember where the heck I got the recipe from! Luckily this recipe is an easy one. In fact this gives a whole lot of bang for your buck! I tried these brownies when we were doing the Easter raffles for our ballet scholarship fundraising when Annmarie brought it over to have with our.....wine.....And a mighty fine mix it was too! They might not look like much and the original recipe doesn't even have chocolate in it however they taste so so so amazing. Like you have used a ton of chocolate...and they have the right amount of gooeyness like a good brownie should (use a decent cocoa though...avoid Cadburys at all costs). I did add some milk chocolate drops and this is the added beauty of this recipe....you can add or leave out extra chocolate and it would still be good. So without further, and much deserved, fanfare here is Annmarie's recipe....

Annmarie's Chocolate Brownie

200 g butter, softened
1 1/2 c caster sugar
3/4 c cocoa (I use Homebrand which is rich and dark and similar to the expensive brands)
1/2 c plain flour
3 eggs
Chocolate drops if you want an even bigger chocolate hit

Preheat the oven to 150C and grease and line a smallish slice tin.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Add in the cocoa and flour and chocolate drops if using.

Bake about 30 mins....don't overdo it though.

Crescent Rolls

I can hear you questioning now....that is not a roll it's an attempt at making croissants! Well you read correctly it's a soft, delicous roll which is a cross between that and a croissant but more roll than anything. I found this recipe online out there in the blogging world and have had it bookmarked to try. On Sunday the morning was a bit rainy so it seemed like the perfect time to get baking. They are made in a similar way to a croissant but with less butter. BUT the result is a deliciously soft and tender but still a bit buttery roll which in my house were all hoovered up in less than an hour. So good straight from the oven with some fresh butter on!!!

I got the recipe from here but note she forgets to say when to add the oil so I did this when I added the wet ingredients. So so so easy but you will need a good 3-4 hours of waiting time. Trust me when I say that these rolls are well worth it!

Plum and Pistachio Tart

I made this for when my sister in law came over for dinner with the most gorgeous little pork chop you could ever see (otherwise known as Ante our nephew), when her husband was overseas for work. I always like to serve a dessert and at the time I was inspired by the delicious plums I have got of George and Russ's tree and had bottled. So I cracked open a jar of these and used them but you could also just open and large can of plums from the supermarket and this would be just as delicious. I loved the green colour from the pitachios with the purple of the plums. It was a perfect end to dinner...not too heavy and not too light...in other words a definite make-again! 

Plum and Pistachio Plum Tart

1x 750g tin Black Doris Plums, drained
70 g pistachios
40 g ground almonds
1/3 c self raising flour
1/2 c caster sugar
100g butter, melted
finely grated zest of 1 lime and 1/2 orange
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp apricot jam, warmed (I didn't do this as I had just used all of my apricot jam up)

Preheat the oven to 180 C (160C fan forced) and grease a 23-24 cm tart tin (or a 11 x 35cm one) with a removable base. Line with baking paper.

Halve and stone the plums then put cut side down on paper towels to absorb some of the moisture.

Pu the pistachios and almonds into a food processor and process until finely chopped. Set aside 1 Tbsp and tip the remaining nuts into a bowl. Add flour, sugar, butter, zests, eggs and vanilla. Beat with a wooden spoon to combine and pour into the tin and spread it our evenly.

Arrange plums cut side down on the batter. You may not use them all. 

Bake 25-30 mins until top is golden and the filling puffed and firm tot he touch. Remove from the oven and brush with the warmed jam. Cool

After taking it out from the tin sprinkle with the reserved nuts and lightly dust with icing sugar. Serve with softly whipped cream or some nice yoghurt.

Baking for Nightshift- Salted Caramel Bundt Cake

My final post for this flurry of posts (especially difficult because I have only had 30 mins sleep since yesterday afternoon!), is this cake. I made this for my first night shift on Friday night. I love anything caramel and anything salted caramel just elevates it to a more sublime level. This cake had a tender crumb and the icing just made it even better. I have to say it wasn't overly caramel but I think that was ok as it wasn't too too sweet which can be a little overwhelming with caramel sometimes. I got a few cupcakes out of the mixture too and I can tell you that this cake keeps very very well. 

Of note I made 1 1/2 times the recipe so I got a bigger cake out of it and it definitely increased well. Make sure you pour the icing over as soon as you make it as it sets on the cake quickly (as you can see) but it doesn't set hard so you break your knife cutting the cake! I thought my icing looked better than the one in the recipe I found as it seemed to have more colour to it...this could be because the sugar there is different to the sugar here? Also for the syrup I used glucose syrup instead of corn syrup but you could probably get away with not using it at all. You can find the recipe here.