Weekend Cooking: Obsessed with Bakeitbox

A couple of years ago I started buy Bake It Box which is a monthly box where you get sent instructions, tools (such as disposable baking trays, food colouring and icing tips) and all the dry ingredients in order to make a bake that I would most likely never choose to make by myself.

Every time I complete a bake I put the printed instruction into a display book, and recently, I realised that my book is full! Now that means I get to start a  new book!

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A post shared by Margaret Wuestenenk (@margreads) on Jan 3, 2020 at 11:10pm PST

This week I thought I would share what I have made since starting on my Bake It Box journey. Just looking through all the photos reminds me of how delicious they all were and that there are several that I am thinking I should make again one day!

Mirror Glaze Heart Cake (Red Velvet Cake with cream cheese frosting and a mirror glaze). I posted about making this cake here.

Pattern Swiss Roll Cake (Sponge with salted caramel cream filling)

Vanilla Custard Cake (posted here)

Marbled Sugar Cookies

Burger Cake

Lemon Meringue Mousse Cake

Elderflower and Lemon Cake

Chocolate Chess Tart

Number Cookie Cake

Spooky Ghost Yoghurt Cake (Yoghurt and Raspberry Cake)

Emoji Cookie Dough Cake

Chocolate Drip Cake

Gingerbread Wreath Cupcakes 

Pull Apart Monkey Bread

Tres Leches Cakes

Heart Pinata Cookies (see the inside of these cookies here)

Coconut and Lime Cake

Black Forest "Choc Bar" Cake

Russian Honey Cake (see the steps involved in making this cake here)

Red Velvet Santa Cupcakes

Admittedly, this is an Australian company, but I am sure there would be similar options elsewhere. I have recommended this to lots of people as something that is really fun to do!

I do still have a few boxes here to make, which doesn't stop me from still anticipating each new box as it is announced!!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.

Top 10 Tuesday: Most Anticipated Book Releases for the First Half of 2020

In my quest to find ways to try to get myself into blogging I thought I would participate in this week's Top 10 Tuesday meme as hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. The theme this week is the books you are excited about in the first half of the year. I don't know if I can join in on the topics on a regular basis and I didn't come up with ten books but never mind!!

Here are the top 8 books I'm looking forward to

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel - The third book in the Wolf Hall series about the life of Thomas Cromwell

The Switch by Beth O'Leary - The Flatshare by this author was my sole 5/5 read in 2019 so I am very much looking forward to this book

Hid From Our Eyes by Julia Spencer Fleming - It has been 7 years since the last instalment in the Rev Clare Fergusson/Russ van Alstyne series which is one which I was well and truly invested in back in the day

The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan - The next book in the Cormac Reilly crime series set in Galway

The Queen's Bargain by Anne Bishop - Another long wait for this book, this time 9 years. In fact, I'm not sure that I even thought that there would ever by another book in the Black Jewels series but here it is!

Something to Talk About by Rachael Johns - Australian author Rachael Johns has been one of my go to authors for a few years now, and I'm sure that this book won't disappoint

The Land Beyond the Sea by Sharon Kay Penman - Confession time. I have loved so many SKP books but despite that I am actually quite behind on her books. Doesn't stop me being excited about a new one though!!

The Women's Page by Victoria Purman -I really enjoyed the Land Girls and The Last of the Bonegilla Girls by this author. This time the author is focusing on the lives of women in the immediate aftermath of WWII.

What upcoming releases are you excited about?

This week I ...

I thought I would see if I could come up with a way to post on a regular basis so the plan will be to do a weekly post which will be what I am reading, watching and doing.


This week I'm reading

Somewhere over the last couple of years I have turned into the person who reads more while they are away than they do at home. This is confounding because I was never that person. I finished my book book on the plane on the way to Perth, and then I finished my ebook while I was away, and so then I was trying to choose something new to read from the books I already had downloaded so I started reading Listen to the Wind by Susanne Dunlap.

One of the good things is that this is historical fiction but with an unusual setting -  13th century France, the time of the Crusades and the persecution of the Cathars. I can only recall reading a couple of books with this setting. One was Labyrinth by Kate Mosse and the other was Daughters of the Grail by Elizabeth Chadwick.

What I didn't quite figure out until I read the authors note was if this book is supposed to be based on history or is a story that has a historical setting. Whatever it is, it was good plane reading.

In theory I am also listening to Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. I was listening to it while I was walking to work, but I haven't been doing either. Maybe when we go back to work!

This week I'm watching

We are currently watching The Whicher.

I was going to say I don't understand why people insist on comparing new show to previous shows, but that isn't quite true. Of course I understand that it is to try to draw in the same audience, but often it does the show in question an injustice.

This show is being compared to Game of Thrones and there are certainly similarities if you just consider they are both set in fantasy worlds, with lots of battles, humour, powerful people, oh, and sex. We are now up to the fourth episode and we are invested in the story. I am not sure I necessarily get what is going on but I am sure it will all come together by the end of the series.

We are also up to season 5 of the British show, Friday Night Dinner. A friend of mine mentioned this show a few weeks ago, and we have been watching it ever since. It makes us laugh out loud a lot! If you like British comedy, give this show a go.

This week I'm also

Contemplating the coming year and what we are hoping to achieve. There are more renovations on the cards, a holiday to plan, and more.

Today, we bought new dining room chairs in addition to the new dining room table and couches that we are waiting to have delivered.

We've been watching the news here with helplessness as so much of our country is beset by fire. There are no fires near me so we have only had a bit of smoke haze to deal with, but every morning I wake up in fear that this will be the day when the death toll rises astronomically. When the Black Saturday fires happened in 2009 we went to bed knowing that there had been a few deaths and when we woke up there were more than 200 deaths. Of course, even one death is too many, and my thoughts are with those that are already mourning the loss of their loved ones, and those who have lost their homes.

Best books of the 2010s

Whilst I have not been reading anywhere near as much in the last half of the decade I was reading quite a lot for the rest of the time and while I haven't been blogging very well for a long time, I did still maintain my Excel spreadsheet which lists all the books I have read. I can't imagine stopping now given that I have actually been maintaining it since 2004!

A quick look at the spreadsheet indicates that in the 2010s I read 34 books that I graded as 5/5 reads.  When I look back now some of those gradings stand up better than others in that I remember reading them and still get warm and fuzzies when I think about those books. Others not so much.

In terms of stand out reads though, there are two books which I read and reread and gave 5/5 grades both times, which is unusual. In both cases, I have read the final linked books in 2019. In the case of The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta.  I listened to it again this year (for the fourth time) in anticipation of the release of  the next book in the series, The Place on Dalhousie. I guess it isn't a series as such, but it does feature all the same characters at different points in their lives. I also loved On the Jellicoe Road by this author

The other book that I read multiple times and graded as 5/5 each time was Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. I just finished reading the latest/final book in that series, Still Me, just a few days ago while I was on a plane. The other book I loved by this author was The Last Letter from Your Lover

In terms of authors,  there are several who appeared more than once on my list of 5/5 reads. As  I mentioned both of the above authors were there with more than one book but there were also:

Elizabeth Chadwick with Lady of the English and To Defy a King

Sara Donati with Into the Wilderness and The Endless Forest, the first and last books in the Into the Wilderness series.

Susanna Kearsley with The Firebird, The Rose Garden and The Shadowy Horses.

For fun, I thought I would mention that my first 5/5 read for the decade was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and the last one was The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary.

In addition to Melina Marchetta, the other Australian authors on the list were John Marsden (Tomorrow When the War Began),  Kimberley Freeman (Lighthouse Bay), Mary-Rose MacColl (In Falling Snow) and Hannah Richell (The Peacock Summer).

I wonder what my first 5/5 read will be this year/decade?

Weekend Cooking: Or Rather My Excuses for not Weekend Cooking

So last week I posted a recipe for gingerbread cookies which were totally  delicious. Wait.....not last week.... more than a year ago. How on earth has that happened?

It's not like I haven't had things to post about. In the last year I have continued my baking adventures, including making puff pastry for the first time, lots of cakes, biscuits and more. Probably not as much as in 2018 but to be fair, it was a busy year.

In 2019 I visited 5 countries, 4 Australian states, had 3 relationship statuses (with the same man), completed 3 renovation projects, changed jobs, my son came home from the US permanently, and those are just the highlights. I'm sure I could think of much more (for example, saw Keith Urban in concert 3 times including once in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry) but that seems enough for now!

So let me expand on a few of those!

Back in May my wonderful partner and I headed off to the US on holidays. There  were several reasons for doing so. Firstly, my son was graduating from junior college,  I was meeting up with some online friends in New Orleans and it was Robert's 50th birthday and he wanted to do a cruise so the best way to combine these things was to cruise the Caribbean starting from New Orleans.

Pre birthday celebration dinner whilst on the cruise

Authentic diner experience for the actual birthday

During the course of the cruise we stopped off in Honduras, Belize and Mexico. In Roatan (Honduras) we spent the day on a chocolate tour, so we got to see the whole process from the pod to hand grinding beans to eating the chocolate we made. It would have been a good day regardless, but that particular day started with us buying an engagement ring and with Robert proposing, and ended with a swim in the Caribbean! A great day all round.

We had actually started planning our wedding prior to heading to the US, and on 1 November we were married on a beach in Vanuatu. It was just the two of us and it was perfect. Our wedding dinner was a three course meal prepared by the resort chef. On our last night in the resort we also had the most amazing seafood platter. Later in November, we had a party at our house to celebrate with friends and family, bonus being that I got to wear the dress twice.

This year we already have more plans for holidays, for renovations and more, but I intend to only have one relationship status this year!

My intention it to be posting about both food and books this year. It will probably be hard to reestablish the blog to any real degree but let's see what happens shall we.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.

Weekend Cooking: Soft Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

This year, more than I ever remember before, it seems my Christmas flavour is gingerbread. There was the mousse recipe I posted last week that I still need to try, then there are the gingerbread cupcakes that I m going to be making on Monday to take to our Christmas gathering, and then there are these little beauties.

I have mentioned before being part of the Queen Baking Club on Facebook. Each fortnight they put up a challenge for the members to make. This week, they put up two. The first was for a Chocolate Salami and the other was for these Soft Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies. I made them for the sous chef to take for his team's morning tea and I ended up taking half. One of the reviews from my co workers was that these were the best thing I had ever taken in, which is a big call because I do take a lot of delicious baking into work.

Somewhere I saw that these are inspired by German Lebkuchen biscuits. There's a couple of other German recipes I am intending to try at some stage, most notably a Beesting cake.

I really want to be able to find this recipe next year so I am sharing it with all of you here too.

For this year though, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Soft Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

100g butter
½ cup (180g) honey
2 tsp orange zest
1 tsp Queen Vanilla Bean Paste
1 large egg, lightly whisked
1 1/3 cup (200g) plain flour
¾ cup (75g) almond meal
¾ cup (75g) hazelnut meal
1 tsp baking powder
½ cup (110g) dark brown sugar, firmly packed
Pinch salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground cloves
150g milk chocolate


Pre-heat oven to 180°C (fan forced). Line 2 baking trays with baking paper.

Combine butter and honey in a large saucepan over a medium heat until butter has melted. Set aside and allow to cool for 10 minutes.

Add orange zest, Vanilla Bean Paste and egg to cooled honey mixture and stir to combine.

In a large bowl, combine remaining ingredients. Pour honey mixture into flour mixture and mix to form a dough.

Roll heaped teaspoons into balls and place on prepared baking trays 5cm apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes, allowing to cool on tray.

Place chocolate in a microwave safe bowl and heat in 30 second increments in the microwave until melted. Dip face of cookies in melted chocolate then allow to set before serving.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.

Weekend Cooking: Gingerbread Souffle

Recently I went to the Cake, Bake and Sweets Show that was held in Melbourne. It is kind of like the Good Food show but is just about the sweeter things in life.

Throughout the venue there were lots of vendors selling various gadgets and different types of chocolates, fudges and cakes, and there were plenty of tasting opportunities too.  We were very controlled and I only ended up buying one cookbook. I do kind of regret not buying one other, but that night we were also going to see Bon Jovi in concert so we couldn't really carry too much around with us all day and night.

The thing that makes these shows more than the gadgets and shopping though is the demonstrations. I think I said this last time I went to the Good Food Show, but I need to be more strategic about planning out the demonstrations I go to. We were working on our deck (more about that another time) in the morning so didn't end up going in until lunch time but if you planned your day better I am sure you could see multiple demonstrations and still see all the exhibits without too much difficulty

As it was I did see two demonstrations and picked up a couple of handy hints along the way. The first demonstration was by French patissier Eric Lanlard and the other was a chocolate demonstration by Jessica Pedemont.  The tip that I have used most since learning it related to piping bags. The first tip is that piping nozzle goes inside the piping bag. I had been putting it on the outside and hoping that the pressure would hold the tip in.  Who knew!

The other tip was about putting the nozzle in and then twisting the piping bag and almost tucking it in the nozzle which creates a lock. You then fill the bag, untwist it and then you are ready for piping and nothing has run out the end unexpectedly!  Simple but effective

Today I am going to share one of the recipes that was shared in the demonstration by Eric Lanlard who apparently has a British TV show called Glamour Puds, several cookbooks and a baking app available from his website. He made two recipes. The first was Gingerbread souffle, which is the recipe below, and the other recipe was a Jamaican Chocolate tart.

The demonstration was lots of fun. Plenty of banter, especially between Eric and the cameraman, lots of encouragement and tips were shared along the way, and the food looked amazing! A couple of the things that he mentioned were to never buy your chocolate from the baking aisle, but buy good quality chocolate from the confectionery aisle. The other thing he talked about was making your own pastry. He totally gave us permission to use shop bought puff and filo pastry but said that shortcrust pastry is totally doable. Not that I needed his permission but still.

So onto the recipe. Now admittedly Eric Lanlard is a professionally trained patissier so of course he makes things look easy, but this recipe really, really did look as though it is something that I could do, and if I can so can others!! He did say this is a recipe for small dinner party. It's not something you want to do for 20 people, but make it straight before you want to eat it. Get it out of the oven and take it to the table and wow your guests. And it is a perfect dessert for this time of the year with the spices making it feel very festive.

Gingerbread Souffle (Eric Lanlard)

50g (2oz) unsalted butter
135g (43/4oz) caster sugar
210g (71/4oz) dark or couverture chocolate
(70% cocoa solids), broken into pieces
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp dark rum
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
5 eggs, separated

To serve

vanilla custard or creme fraiche

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 180.C (fan 160.C)/350.F/gas mark 4. Melt half the butter and use to brush the inside of eight small ramekins. Tip 25g (1oz) of the caster sugar into one ramekin and tap around the sides to lightly coat. Pour the excess into the next ramekin and repeat until all the ramekins are butter- and sugar-coated.

2. Melt the chocolate with the spices, rum, vanilla extract and remaining butter in a large heatproof bowl over a pan of gently simmering water (the base of the bowl must not touch the water). Stir until smooth. Remove the bowl from the heat and mix the egg yolks in one at a time.

3. In a large clean bowl, whisk the egg whites to soft, moist-looking peaks. Mix a little into the chocolate mixture, then gently fold in the rest, using a large metal spoon.

4. Divide the souffle mixture between the ramekins, spooning it in, and place the ramekins on a baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven for exactly 11 minutes.

5. Serve with vanilla custard poured into the centre of each souffle

TIP

These soufflés must be cooked just before eating; they will flatten within 2 minutes of being removed from the oven. Be careful not to open the oven during cooking, as this may prevent them from rising.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.