I've noticed that recently I've been spending too much money on takeaway and cafe food - and generally unhealthy stuff too - a pie or a focaccia on my lunch break at work; a muffin at uni when I sleep in and don't have time for breakfast; and coffees and any given time of day, for any reason...
**I actually made this meal a few months ago, but never got around to blogging it.**Please to enjoy!My dear friend An has recently moved interstate to start a new career. Sniff!We had a farewell dinner for him a few weeks ago, which included many of his favourite food groups.- crispy chicken fat- gravy- chocolate- creamMmm... delicious.MenuRoast Chicken with...
Forever Summer was the first of Nigella's books that I ever bought. I think it was not as popular as her others, but it remains one of my favourites. This delicious chicken dish was one that I'd wanted to try for ages, but never quite got around to. Until recently. You simply marinate a chicken in a mixture...
This weekend, my good friend Frances' celebrated her birthday, which coincided with St. Patrick's day. The instructions on her invitation said, "Wear green! Bring Corrs' CDs!". Having neither a green outfit nor a Corrs' CD to hand, I instead slapped some green eyeshadow on, and baked a very appropriate cake - Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake.
From the "Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame" chapter in Feast, the Guinness cake is a simple melt-and-mix dealy. Start with some Guinness in a pan, and add butter, cocoa, sugar, eggs, vanilla, sour cream, flour and bicarb. Easy. The recipe says to bake it for 45 minutes in a 23cm tin, but as I wanted it to be shared amongst Frances' many friends, I baked half the mixture in a 20cm tin, with the rest in mini-muffin tins. The mini-muffins took about 20 minutes, and the full sized cake took about 30 minutes. It is a damp and dark cake, so make sure you test it with a skewer rather than just going by eye.
Once it's completely cool, you can ice it. Nigella's icing of choice is cream-cheese based, so that the finished cake resembles a pint of Guinness. I iced the cupcakes on the same day, but did the large cake the next day. This allowed the very moist and damp cake time to cool down and firm up so that I could unmould it without fear of breakage.
I covered the iced cakes with little green sugar sprinkles, for a festive touch. As for the large cake, I did a mixture of little sprinkles, and the green leaves (not shamrocks, but still festive) from a packet of mixed colour sprinkles.
The cupcakes turned out really well! The cake mixture is very moist, and has a fabulous sugary crusty exterior. I think the cream-cheese icing makes a fabulous combination. It isn't too sweet, and the tang really undercuts and complements the sweetness of the cake. I will definitely make the cake again. And with 600ml of Guinness left, how could I not? There's no way I'm going to drink it! Urks.
Frances liked the cake. Yay, success!!
Last week, we celebrated my parents' 30th wedding anniversary, for which I decided to bake an enormous cake. I didn't want to go with a usual big ol' chocolate cake (my mum is not that keen on chocolate), but still wanted something that looked celebratory. After much deliberation, I ended up choosing Tyler Florence's yellow butter cake with...
I have recently been revisiting my copy of Feast, thanks to the new Nigella Feasts programme. It's screening on Wednesday nights on the Lifestyle channel, and is endlessly repeated throughout the week. I'm totally loving it. (Naturally!) This week's episode focused on dinners, and Nigella's crunchy pork chops with a garlicky tomato and spinach salad just looked so...