Winter Lusciousness

I love winter for the food...pure and simple. Winter is the pudding and casserole season, while Summer is for salads and steaks and fresh fruity deserts...

So here's another pudding to beat away the Winter chills. This time a delicious, dark, self saucing chocolate pudding that is full of flavour, but not too sickly sweet.

Again, I played around with an old recipe adding bits and pieces here and there.

OK, Preheat oven to about 180 degrees and grease a casserole dish.

Into a bowl place 1 cup of self raising flour

1/2 cup castor sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa powder.

Swirl them around until the three are combined.

Place 50 grams of butter into a heat proof bowl or jug and melt in the microwave for about 20 seconds until it's very soft, then add

1/2 cup of milk and

1 egg and mix together, then pour it into the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon or spatula until combined.

At this stage I added a handful of chopped dark chocolate and a half a cup of Morello cherries I had in the cupboard. Fold together and pour mixture into the greased casserole dish

To make the sauce:

Mix together 3/4 cup brown sugar and

2 tablespoons cocoa powder, sprinkle it over the cake mixture, then gently pour 1 1/2 cups boiling water over the top

It will look kind of messy at this stage, but it will be OK. Trust me.

Place into the oven and bake for about 40 minutes.

When you take it out of the oven, let it cool for a couple of minutes before serving with cream or ice-cream. Or both!

I guarantee, this will be devoured!

It must have been good because this is all that's left of it after last night's dinner.

ENJOY!

Luscious, sticky heaven in a bowl

We had friends over for dinner recently, so I thought I'd make something I haven't done in ages...a Sticky Date Pudding...and it turned out rather well.

I'm not one to stick religiously to a recipe, so I hunted out a couple of them and combined them to see how it went. I checked out my Donna Hay Mags as well as Taste.com. Donna Hay has a Sticky Date Pudding in it this month and the Taste website also has a number of recipes for the pudding....so....

Here's what I did.

Combined 250 grams of chopped pitted dates in a bowl with a teaspoon of bi-carb of soda and a cup of hot water. Let it stand for about 15 minutes, then blended it in a food processor

Added 100 grams of chopped butter and 1/2 cup of brown sugar and gave it a whizz, then put in two eggs and gently processed it

Poured it all into a large bowl and added 1 cup of Self Raising flour and gently mixed it all together.

I used a 20cmx20cm cake tin lined with baking paper and put it in a 180 degree oven for about 30 minutes. When it came out of the oven it was as light as a feather.

To make the caramel sauce...

I put 150 grams of butter, 1 cup of cream and 1 cup of brown sugar in a small saucepan and brought it to the boil...then let it simmer for a minute.

I put the cooled cake onto a plate and pierced the top with a skewer, then spooned some of the sauce over the top...the rest of the sauce was put into a jug and served it with the pudding.

That's it! It was so easy and absolutely delish!

What I am going to have to do though is get me one of these babies!

DROOL!

The KitchenAid Food Processor is magnificent!

I bought myself one of their stand mixers last year and it's been fantastic! Time to upgrade my old processor methinks

Yo Yo's...or Melting Moments

Photo by Steve Brown

I made these this morning...and they're delicious.

I had a bit of a disaster at first though. I used an old recipe from a little yellow book compiled by the Frankston Lions Ladies. I think I've had it since the 1970's. It's biscuits were titled Custard Kisses and the recipe included an egg, with custard powder, sugar, butter and self raising flour. But when I put them in the oven they melted into each other and turned out looking like pancakes.

I then hit Taste.com...and came up with these. They're from Notebook: Feb 2008...but most importantly, they're yummy!

Ingredients:

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125g butter, softened
3/4 cup (115g) plain flour
1/4 cup (45g) icing sugar
1/3 cup (50g) custard powder

Filling:

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60g butter, softened, extra
2/3 cup (110g) icing sugar mixture, extra
2 tsp finely grated lemon rind
1 tbs lemon juice

Preheat oven to about 160 degrees. Cream butter and sugar, add custard powder and flour and mix until just combined. Roll into small balls and place on a baking tray that has been lined with baking paper. Bake for about 12 to 15 minutes then allow to cool

To make filling... combine butter, icing cugar lemon rind and lemon juice and mix until light and fluffy, then sandwich between two biscuits.

As a variation, you can also add some passionfruit to the mix for an extra bit of zing!