It simply wouldn’t be a summer holiday without a little cold beer, would it? And luckily the remote, beautiful Coromandel Peninsula, the current holiday location, was happy to oblige us with the the Hot Water Brewery. You find this little delight on the Tairua-Whitianga Road, …
Hello everyone, this shan’t be my usual post with recipe, or even a very long one – the Mister and I are on holiday, currently in the beautiful Bay of Plenty, NZ, at the dazzling Papamoa Beach. But I thought I might share a few …
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I am fortunate to have parentals who kindly bring me ingredients from their travels, with which I can then experiment. And so today, I’m going to tell you all about my fun with a bottle of coconut syrup, which I understand comes from this shop in Dunedin (although originally hailing from the warmer climes of Bali).
The label informs me that this product is ‘the maple syrup of the tropics’ and is made from the ‘sweet, energised water produced by living coconut trees.’ I don’t know exactly what it takes for water to be energised, but perhaps this explains the current craze for coconut water.
The label also instructs me to ‘get ready for a sensational eating experience most people can only dream of.’ This is a bold claim.
My friend the internet did not yield a great deal of recipes including coconut syrup, so I was on my own on this one. I settled on the idea of a coconut loaf , comforting, tasty, and most importantly, probably agreeable enough to coconut syrup.
I have more or less shamelessly cribbed my recipe from this one, electing to include my syrup in place of the rum. Not that I have anything against rum, but the only spirit currently in my house is gin, and I don’t think gin and coconut loaf would have a lot going for it.
I started off by setting the oven to 180C, greasing a loaf tin and lining its base. Then I sifted together:
To this, I stirred in:
In another bowl, I beat together:
And now, it was time for the coconut syrup. I wrenched off the lid and it was a tense moment – would it deliver the promised taste sensation that others can only dream of?
Well dear reader, it is intensely sweet, thick, a lovely rich dark brown colour, and not at all unpleasant. But I think I am still waiting for a taste sensation of the promised magnitude.
Not to worry, I then added to the yoghurt, oil and eggs mixture:
I folded the yoghurt mixture into the dry ingredients until blended and scraped it into the greased, lined tin. I baked the loaf until a skewer inserted into the middle came out clean, which took one hour ten minutes in my oven, and I covered the top of the loaf with foil to prevent burning for the last ten minutes.
I decided this cake would do well with some icing, mainly because I really, really love icing. I made a lime icing by mixing together icing sugar, butter, a little hot water and the juice of the lime, which I slathered over the loaf when cool.
The verdict? This recipe makes a moist, substantial loaf which leaves you feeling satisfied that you are getting something hearty and filling. Full credit to the original recipe for providing such a simple method yielding such a lovely loaf. I must confess however, that I am not convinced the coconut syrup added a huge amount to the process. The label does include the suggestion that one may like to try it on ice cream or pancakes, and I do think it would be most pleasing in this form, even if my baking with it is not about to take the world by storm.
Take care readers, and do alert me should any coconut syrup deliver you the taste sensation previously only dreamt of in coming days.
I have come into possession of two fruity items this week – a lovely big batch of stewed apples courtesy of my sister, and a tin of strawberries. Yes, tinned strawberries, what a strange thing indeed. I found them in the supermarket on special for …
I promised you that there would be more almonds to follow as part of my Edmonds Cookbook challenge, and I did not lie. We now find ourselves at devilled almonds. When you put your mind to it, there is a considerable number of food items …
Who doesn’t love a bit of maple syrup? The indigenous people of the Americas were the first to harvest maple sap. One legend credits the humble squirrel with its discovery, telling of a young boy who watched a red squirrel nip at the bark of a maple tree and lap up the sap. How cute is that?! I love squirrels and I’m well willing to believe it.
My husband came home from work recently, deeply enamoured of some maple syrup cookies, an office treat from a workmate’s holiday in Canada. Not one to be outdone by holiday biscuits, I decided to rise to the challenge of making some maple cookies of my own.
I based my biscuits on this lovely recipe, with the addition of some spices as I fancied a little kick.
To make these spiced maple biscuits, you will need:
Begin by melting the butter and once melted, mix in the sugar and leave it to cool. Melt the butter in a reasonably-sized pot, as the beauty of this recipe is you can make the whole lot in this one pot. And what’s not to love about less washing-up?
Once the butter and sugar are cool, add the egg and mix in. Follow with the maple syrup and the vanilla.
Sift in the flour, salt, baking powder and spices and mix to combine.
This will leave you with quite a gloopy mixture (as demonstrated below). Do not panic! It now goes into your fridge for at least an hour to chill.
Set your oven to 180 degrees during this time.
Once chilled, scoop teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking tray. The mixture is quite pliable and you can easily shape the biscuits with your fingers. Sprinkle with some caster sugar and a little cinnamon if you fancy.
Bake them until golden, about 10-12 minutes in my oven, and transfer to a rack to cool. The mixture makes about 36, if you use teaspoon-sized dollops of the raw dough.
Because I was feeling creative, I topped mine with a little heart-shaped dusting of icing sugar….pretty easy to do, although I warn you, the icing sugar gets everywhere. If you wish to try this at home (although I understand if you cannot be bothered), I simply cut the shape out of a piece of stiff cardboard slightly larger than biscuit size, placed the cardboard over the biscuit, and sifted on the icing sugar. Remove the cardboard and there you have it, a cute little heart plonked on your biscuit.
These go down nicely with a cup of tea!
Forgive me readers, but I’m going to take a small detour through the Edmonds Cookbook index. Hot on the heels of Almond Biscuits is Almond Icing (yes, there are indeed a lot of almond-based recipes in the Edmonds Cookbook, and they’re not going away any …
The little rosette in the middle of my bok choy, depicted above, is not something you’d see in an exhibition-standard specimen. It indicates the plant in question has gone to seed. Far from being ashamed, I am absolutely delighted I kept something alive long enough …
Who knew that the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia was a hot bed of macadamia nut growing? I for one did not, and yet, I find myself in possession of a packet of macadamia nuts from Nutworks, thanks to my parentals and their recent visit to this part of the world.
I just love macadamia nuts. They are so rich and meaty and make such good friends with chocolate. They seem to be one of the fattiest nuts available, and this is pretty much in line with the rest of my tastes. I always like the foodstuff that’s supposedly the worst for you. Well, life just wouldn’t be any fun otherwise, would it.
Having attacked this packet of nuts over the past week or so and marauded it for idle snacking purposes only, I decided I really owed it to these fine little nuts to do something substantial with them. The idea of a chewy biscuit and some good chocolate appealed. Macadamia and chocolate chunk cookies it was.
I adapted this recipe from my go-to chocolate chip biscuit recipe, Cadbury’s own. I rather proud of myself because, as discussed in earlier posts, my biscuit-making can be a little hit and miss, but these were quite pleasant; sweet and chewy.
To make these, you will need:
Makes: 15
Set your oven to 160 degrees celsius.
Start by creaming the butter and sugars together until they are light and fluffy.
Whisk in the egg. Add the vanilla paste or essence and mix this in too.
I include reference here to vanilla paste, as recently I decided to splash out and buy some of this stuff. And it’s lovely! It looks a little gloopy, but it adds a lovely flavour to one’s baking, and has those delightful little flecks of vanilla seed that make any dessert seem a little bit posher and gourmet.
Stir in the flour.
Chop up your dark chocolate – I used Whittaker’s 50% dark chocolate because I love it so. I think you could go for even darker chocolate and it would still be lovely in these cookies.
Chop up the macadamia nuts too (which is a bit challenging because the little blighters roll away…watch your fingers!).
Add the nuts and chocolate to the mix and fold through.
Put teaspoonfuls on a greased tray and bake for 15 – 20 minutes until golden brown. I would urge you not to make them bigger than this – I got greedy with a couple, and they when they spread out they were a little unweildy.
Cool on a plate or rack and enjoy!
We now found ourselves at Almond Biscuits in the Edmonds Cookbook index. Almond Biscuits, as a category of baked good, enjoy a little more history and reputation than I had suspected. The internet informs me that these popular biscuits are “prepared in different ways across various …