Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

I’m pretty sure I made this for the very first time in Home Ec when I was in Year 8. Before I go on to lament on how Home Economics is seriously undervalued (actually, I won’t because we’d be here all day), I’d better give you the instructions in 10 words:

Heat butter. Add honey. Add sugar. Add oats. Stir. Bake.

Not enough? Ah well. I tried.

For about 10-12 slice-sized biscuits:

1. 3.5 cups of rolled oats
2. 125 g. of unsalted butter
3. 1/3 cup of sugar
4. 4 tbsp of honey

Preheat the oven to 150′C. Place the baking tray in the oven to warm.

Melt the butter on low heat. Add honey and stir until combined. Add sugar and stir until the sugar dissolves. Add all of the oats and stir over low heat for a few minutes until well combined.

Cut a sheet of baking paper to the size of the baking tray. I useLyn’s baking tray which is about 18cm x 25cm. It’s perfect for making the quantity of flapjacks that this recipe produces. This is the reason  she is not getting her baking tray back in hurry.

Take a block of butter and run the butter on the warmed tray. This is the easiest way to grease the tray. I do the same with muffin tins and other baking containers. Add the oat mixture and press it down firmly. Bake for about 30-40 minutes.

Once done, leave to cool for about 10 minutes before slicing into biscuits.

No recipe here. I just used the pre-packed Homebrand chocolate cake mix with some added melted cooking chocolate. I have to say, it’s totally rubbish. I dust them with icing sugar to make them feel more palatable!

This is very yummy. If I may say so myself. And it’s fabulously easy. I base it on the master muffin recipe in Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion.

This makes 12 mini muffins or 6 standard-sized muffins.

Standard sweet muffin batter

1. 220 g. self-raising flour
2. 1/2 cup of raw sugar
3. 3/4 cup milk
4. 3/4 cup of vegetable oil
5. 1 egg
6. butter to grease

Blueberry and walnut muffin addition

1. 150 g. frozen blueberries
2. 2 tbsp walnut, lightly crushed

Basically, you can use the standard muffin batter and add any ingredients you want. Stephenie recommends 150 g. of berries, if you’re making a berry muffin. And I added 2 tbsp of walnut for the texture and this proportion works out well.

Preheat the oven to 180′ c.

Sift together the flour and sugar into a bowl. Add the walnuts.

Whisk together milk, egg and oil until well combined. I find this part really fun – trying to mix together oil and milk. Then add the blueberries into the egg mixture.

Slowly pour the egg mixture  into the dry ingredient mix and briefly mix together until the flour absorbs all the liquid. Don’t beat and don’t overmix. This is not cupcake.

Grease the muffin tin with butter. I have discovered a neat trick which makes greasing muffin tin a breeze. I put the muffin tin into the preheated oven until it’s hot. I cut a small block of butter and rub it against the hot tin. The heat will melt the butter and it will coat the muffin tin. Divide the batter equally. Fill up to about 3/4 of the way. The muffins will rise further.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes. Generally with this standard muffin mix, it normally takes about 25-30 minutes but because my muffins have substantial frozen blueberry contents in them. If you’re using non-frozen blueberries, it won’t take anywhere near  as long.

I recommend checking at 25 minutes to see whether the muffins are cooked by inserting a skewer into the middle. If it comes out clean it’s cooked.

Let them cool for about 10 minutes before trying to remove them from the muffin tin. Eat as much as you can immediately (they’re so yummy fresh!) and freeze the rest once they are cooled so they stay fresh.

They take a few minutes to thaw at room temperature and are also really good cold so don’t bother nuking them.

Sunday! Pancake Day! Woo hoo!

Pancake Batter
(makes about 6 small pancakes – perfect for 2 people)

1. 1 1/2 cups of self raising flour
2. 1 cup of milk
3. 2 large eggs
4. a pinch of salt
5. 1 tbsp of cream

Whisk everything together for about ten minutes. Yep. The longer you whisk, the better it is. Alternatively (more messy and time consuming) – beat the egg whites until the soft peak forms and add to the batter and mix gently. Add a little slice of butter to a non-stick pan (I seriously recommend the small $4 Ikea non-stick pan), gently pour the batter on. Wait until the upside bubbles and the edge is set, flip over and wait the same amount of time.

Blueberry, Apple and Honey Sauce

Why this combination? Well, two main reasons, I have too many apples and I have no sugar, hence the honey. This is a slight deviation from the usual blueberry sauce. I add a chopped apple into the blueberries and squeeze in about two tablespoons of honey instead of sugar.

Serve the pancake with some of the blueberry sauce and pour over some cream.

(my second pancake)

Happy Sunday!

This is what I make when I feel like dessert at about 11pm at night (granted I can probably walk to the market and get some dessert but whatever). Basically it’s just custard using instant custard powder (which I imagine to be made of corn flour, egg colouring, sugar and some vanilla flavouring but I could be wrong) in the microwave and toss in chopped banana. Voila. Almost instant warm dessert that’s really yummy.

Put one cup of milk (I always use pasteurized milk because UHT long life milk just does not do) in a big bowl and place it in a microwave on high for two minutes. Meanwhile, mix two tablespoon of custard powder with about 3 tablespoons of milk. Whisk that up (you don’t really need a whisk, but it is much better to have one) to mix well to form a smooth mixture.

Once the milk is hot (after 2 minutes), remove the hot milk from the microwave, pour the custard mixture into the hot milk, add two teaspoons of sugar and whisk until it’s all combine. Depends on what custard powder you’re using (some have more sugar than others) and how sweet and ripe your banana is, you may need more or less sugar. Work as quickly as possible and put the custard mixture back into the microwave for two minutes. Every half a minute, remove the mixture from the microwave and whisk again.

After two minutes, you should end up with nice thick custard. If the mixture is too watery, add a little more custard/milk mixture, if it’s too thick, add milk. This is why you have to check it every thirty seconds or so. You can do this on the stove top, which means you constantly whisk it. But I find it much easier to just use the nuke machine – less washing up that way. Add a sliced banana into the custard mixture, and nuke it for another minute or so. Let it sit and let the banana cook in its own heat or 2-3 minutes.

That’s it! It’s so simple. I can’t believe this is what they used to feed us in boarding school. It was actually a gem.