God and Chocolate

So apparently yesterday was Shrove Tuesday. This means that today is Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. A few months ago I was thinking about how I could reaffirm my faith. The general overview is that I believe that there is a God, I just have issues with some of the things that the Catholic Church teaches. Anyway, so my thoughts went along the lines of starting with Lent and doing it properly with the whole fasting thing. After some research, I remembered that the fasting part of Lent is essentially no meat or dairy until Easter Sunday. This would be fine except that I'm a shift worker as well as a student and if I don't eat properly, things just don't happen. Part of me eating properly is eating a balance of protein, calcium and vegies so no vegetarian diet for me.

I then thought about doing something along the lines of no chocolate or no takeaway. Until I was sitting in the car park at McDonald's with my dinner and remembered all this. I thought that I could just start it a day late and see if I could go the 40 days with no take away and then thought of something better.

Instead of improving myself by giving up something, I am going to make myself do something instead.

My aim is to do some form of exercise at least 3 times a week. It started with a Pilates class this evening and will end with a 5 day, 4 night hike over the Easter long weekend at Wilson's Promontory. It also includes the Herald Sun Run for the Kids in 4 weeks. If my heel is up for it then I'm going to walk the long course, otherwise I'm walking the short course.

Now onto the chocolate, I made a half batch of brownie biscuits (recipe on hteac) and only baked a dozen or so. the rest has been sitting in the fridge being snacked on as the week goes by.... Now I need to bake a batch of my special brownies for the open rehearsal tomorrow, sit and watch whip it as I make more sugar roses for a birthday cake.

Risotto again.......

For the past month I've been experimenting with different types of risotto and I think I've found my go to base recipe. White wine, chicken stock, rice, onion (depending on who I'm feeding) and garlic. Lots of garlic.

I've been wanting to experiment with dessert risotto for a while now and I made an awesome one tonight. Instead of a savoury stock I used hot mi

lk with a little sugar and a stick of cinnamon as my spic

e. Served with some fresh raspberries to cut through the richness and it was amazing. And the thing that made it so rich.....CHOCOLATE!!!!

So here it is.

Chocolate risotto

serves 2

Stock

2 cups milk

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup cocoa, sifted

1 stick of cinnamon

In a saucepan combine sugar, milk, cinnamon and cocoa. Stir over medium heat until combined, then bring to a simmer and leave for 5 minutes.

Keep stirring occasionally so the sugar doesn't

burn. Turn the heat off and cover for about 20 minutes to let the heat infuse.

Risotto

2 knobs of butter

3/4-1 cup risotto rice

1/4 cup rum

cinnamon stick ( I just fished out the one in the stock and threw it in)

2 cups stock

1 punnet raspberries

Melt 1 knob of butter in a saucepan over medium heat, when melted throw in rice.

Let it get nice and toasty, then stand back and throw in the rum.

Notice the smudgy fingerprints on the side of this bottle? It's from all the cake decorating I've been doing. Soaking fruit cakes in rum so that they stay happy and fresh. mmmm rum.

When that's evapourated, add the hot stock in 3-4 batches and lower the heat slightly. Keep adding the stock gradually whilst stirring until all the stock is absorbed and the rice is cooked.

If you run out of stock, either add more hot milk or some hot water in small amounts until the rice is cooked. It should be soft with a little bite. Stir through the second knob of butter.

Divide amongst 2 plates and serve with 1/4 punnet raspberries on top of each. I'm assuming that you ate the other half punnet whilst you were cooking.

Enjoy

Daring Bakers January

So I finally made it back on track and here we have the later challenge. Cue blog checking lines .......... now.

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

So I made these late in the month and after reading all the advice from everyone else in the forums, doubled the amount of chocolate topping. I also cheated. The challenge said to make the graham crackers gluten free and from scratch, however due to time constraints I bought the digestive biscuits instead..... Give me a break I've been working the graveyard shift. recipe to follow!

For Gluten-Free Graham Wafers
Ingredients
1 cup (138 g) (4.9 ounces) Sweet rice flour (also known as glutinous rice flour)
3/4 cup (100 g) (3.5 ounces) Tapioca Starch/Flour
1/2 cup (65 g) (2.3 ounces) Sorghum Flour
1 cup (200 g) (7.1 ounces) Dark Brown Sugar, Lightly packed
1 teaspoon (5 mL) Baking soda
3/4 teaspoon (4 mL ) Kosher Salt
7 tablespoons (100 g) (3 ½ ounces) Unsalted Butter (Cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen)
1/3 cup (80 mL) Honey, Mild-flavoured such as clover.
5 tablespoons (75 mL) Whole Milk
2 tablespoons (30 mL) Pure Vanilla Extract

Directions:
1. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, combine the flours, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Pulse on low to incorporate. Add the butter and pulse on and off, until the mixture is the consistency of a coarse meal. If making by hand, combine aforementioned dry ingredients with a whisk, then cut in butter until you have a coarse meal. No chunks of butter should be visible.
2. In a small bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk together the honey, milk and vanilla. Add to the flour mixture until the dough barely comes together. It will be very soft and sticky.
3. Turn the dough onto a surface well-floured with sweet rice flour and pat the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Wrap in plastic and chill until firm, about 2 hours, or overnight.
4. Divide the dough in half and return one half to the refrigerator. Sift an even layer of sweet rice flour onto the work surface and roll the dough into a long rectangle, about 1/8 inch thick. The dough will be quite sticky, so flour as necessary. Cut into 4 by 4 inch squares. Gather the scraps together and set aside. Place wafers on one or two parchment-lined baking sheets. Chill until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes. Repeat with the second batch of dough.
5. Adjust the rack to the upper and lower positions and preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius).
6. Gather the scraps together into a ball, chill until firm, and reroll. Dust the surface with more sweet rice flour and roll out the dough to get a couple more wafers.
7. Prick the wafers with toothpick or fork, not all the way through, in two or more rows.
8. Bake for 25 minutes, until browned and slightly firm to the touch, rotating sheets halfway through to ensure even baking. Might take less, and the starting location of each sheet may determine its required time. The ones that started on the bottom browned faster.
9. When cooled completely, place enough wafers in food processor to make 1 ¼ cups (300 mL) of crumbs. Another way to do this is to place in a large ziplock bag, force all air out and smash with a rolling pin until wafers are crumbs.

Nanaimo Bars
Ingredients:

For Nanaimo Bars — Bottom Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
1/4 cup (50 g) (1.8 ounces) Granulated Sugar
5 tablespoons (75 mL) Unsweetened Cocoa
1 Large Egg, Beaten
1 1/4 cups (300 mL) (160 g) (5.6 ounces) Gluten Free Graham Wafer Crumbs (See previous recipe)
1/2 cup (55 g) (1.9 ounces) Almonds (Any type, Finely chopped)
1 cup (130 g) (4.5 ounces) Coconut (Shredded, sweetened or unsweetened)

For Nanaimo Bars — Middle Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons (40 mL) Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons (30 mL) Vanilla Custard Powder (Such as Bird’s. Vanilla pudding mix may be substituted.)
2 cups (254 g) (8.9 ounces) Icing Sugar

For Nanaimo Bars — Top Layer
4 ounces (115 g) Semi-sweet chocolate
2 tablespoons (28 g) (1 ounce) Unsalted Butter

Directions:
1. For bottom Layer: Melt unsalted butter, sugar and cocoa in top of a double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, nuts and coconut. Press firmly into an ungreased 8 by 8 inch pan.
2. For Middle Layer: Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light in colour. Spread over bottom layer.
3. For Top Layer: Melt chocolate and unsalted butter over low heat. Cool. Once cool, pour over middle layer and chill.

I also chopped them up into tiny squares a centimetre or two square. Little mouthfuls of deliciousness.

Baking days are back!

So Australia Day is just around the corner (24 hours to be precise) which means marathon day is getting closer. Marathon day consists of an 8 hour shift at work followed by a street parade in teh city and then a drive out to the country for a lunchtime picnic and gig. The marathon part consists of doing this on very little sleep. Needless to say, I'm not driving that day!

I offered to do the sweets course for lunch and have finally decided on a menu.

This months Daring Bakers Challenge (haven't yet decided if its going to the picnic or work yet)

Australia Day cupcakes - lamingtons!

brownies

The lamington cupcakes are an experiment that I'm hoping will work out awesomely.

After work today (9am) I plan on making the cupcakes, making brownies, finishing touches on the challenge and some laundry.

awesome risotto

The best risotto in the world has been made, eaten, frozen, reheated and still devoured. And it was all made with random things from my fridge and freezer!

Chicken

Mushrooms

Semi sundried tomatoes

Basil

Parmesan cheese

essentially making a chicken and mushroom pesto risotto.

tastes fantastic!

I promise I'm still alive!

So there is a backlog of posts that are waiting to be uploaded. The only issue is that I have no time at the moment.

I'm also trying to figure out what to serve for Australia Day. One of the bands I play in has 2 gigs on Australia Day, the city parade and then an afternoon gig in the country complete with picnic lunch. I volunteered to do the sweets part. I'm thinking this months challenge, cheesecake brownies and possibly the danish pastry challenge if I can find it.

I've also had a revelation as to my career.

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I'm going to be a teacher

Shocked?

After 3 years of working full time I've decided that I'm really not happy in my profession. I'm bored, unenthusiastic and really just don't care anymore. So my fan is to finish off my honours degree this year and save like crazy so that next year I can quit my job and go back to uni full time to do a Grad Dip Ed.

Oh and I'm also moving out of my current house when the lease is up at the end of the year. Love the house, hate the situation. My housemate and I have known each other for over 10 years but in the last 6-12 months things have gone down hill. The main issue I have is that she is never home. She still pays rent but has essentially moved in with her boyfriend and his family. I hate living alone. More on that later.

Just a taste of what has happened in the last few months

Biscuit disaster averted!

I almost had a biscuit disaster yesterday. Every season so far this year, I do the supper for the Monucs concert. Last season involved 2 days of making cakes, macaroons and choc chip bikkies. This season is just choc chip bikkies, some with nuts and some without.

The disaster began when I realised that I couldn't find my recipe. It's one I stole of a friend and tweaked slightly. Last season I ended up with flat, chewy biscuits of awesome addictiveness. When I couldn't find it, I started the search for another recipe. The only thing I had an issue remembering was how much flour was needed. So I turned to Baked. The differences between the Baked choc chip cookies and mine is in the flour and sugar content. They use 2 cups, I use 3.5 of flour, sugar they use 1 cup brown, 1/2 white, I use 2 cups dark brown.

Then resulting cookies were cakey. I really don't like cakey cookies. So I ended up on the internet trawling through facebook trying to find the recipe again and success!

For future reference
(double batch)

3.5 cups plain flour
1 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
vanilla
250g choc chips
2tsp baking powder