What's a long weekend without baking?

 Pepe surprised me one afternoon with Adam Liaw- Two Asian Kitchens.

So I couldn't wait to try out a few recipes.

The two that caught my interest was the Ants' Nest Cake and the Sataa andagi.  

Ants’ Nest Cake

Serves 8-10

The texture of this cake is as its name suggests an ants nest. The butter that floats to the top of the batter forms this bumpy surface and then the bottom layer of the cake has this honeycomb look which looks very much the tunnel matrix that ants would have in their nest.

Ingredients

220g caster sugar

85g unsalted butter, softened

½ tsp vanilla extract

4 eggs at room temperature

125mL condensed milk

150g plain flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

Put the sugar into a medium saucepan and heat gently swirling the pan occasionally until melted to a dark caramel. Reduce the heat to low and add 250mL water ( it did spit so stand back). The caramel will solidify but continue to stir over low heat until no lumps remain and you have a thin liquid caramel. Set aside to cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally.

Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease an 18cm round cake tin and line the base with baking paper. Cream the butter and vanilla extract in a large bowl until the butter becomes slightly pale.

In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs until well combined. Add the eggs, condensed milk and caramel to the creamed butter and whisk to combine. Sift together the butter and bicarbonate of soda and use the whisk to gently stir into the butter mixture.

Don’t worry that the butter doesn’t mix in evenly- this is how it should be.

Pour the cake batter into the tin and leave for a minute or two. Bake for 50 minutes or until the cake is springy to a gentle touch in the centre. Leave to cool in the tin then run a knife around the edge before turning out.

A great breakfast includes donuts and coffee.

Adam Liaw has a recipe called Sataa Andagi which is fried donut and I was dying to try it. So first chance I got I made up a batch of these yummy balls.

I used half the quantities called for in his recipe and I also reduced the sugar and replaced the cream for condensed milk and still got an amazing result.

Sataa andagi

Ingredients

2 eggs

125mL pouring cream ( I substituted with condensed milk)

¼ tsp vanilla paste

300g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

220g caster sugar

¼ tsp salt

Vegetable oil to deep fry

Method

Whisk the eggs, cream and vanilla together in a large bowl. Sift together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Fold into the egg mixture until well combined.

Half fill a large saucepan with oil and heat to 180C. Drop teaspoonsfuls of dough into the hot oil, cooking about 6 at a time. Fry for 2 minutes until golden brown and risen to the surface. Lift out with a slotted spoons and drain on paper towels. They will become crisp on cooling.

You ask what Jaeminkins was upto whilst all this cooking was going on. He kept himself happily amused with the cookie cutters. I think he's going to be the next pastry chef hahahahah.



Queens Birthday long weekend

One of our favourite things to do on the weekend is cook with really good produce and meats we haven't tried before. Therefore we headed out to Vics Meats at Botany, http://www.vicsmeat.com.au/ to load up our freezer for the month. As it was a long wet Queen’s birthday weekend and there was no better way to spend it than to stay at home and cook up a feast.

We stopped by usual breakfast of a chicken roll and spring roll. The queue at both the Vics meats store and Hong Ha bread place was as usual long.

Cooked an amazing veal roast with potato gratin based from the Neil Perry cookbook ‘The food I love’.

Veal Roast

Ingredients

3-4 bone rack of milk fed veal

Sea salt

Extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 75C. Remove rack from the refrigerator a couple of hours before cooking and rub the rack with sea salt. Rub the rack with extra virgin olive oil and put into large roasting tin. Put in the preheated oven and turn the dish every 30 minutes. After an hour, check the core cooking temperature with a meat thermometer. As veal is less dense than beef due to the muscle structure, it doesn’t take as long to cook.

When the temperature of the veal reaches 58-60C depending whether you like it closer to medium to well done, remove it from the oven. Put a frying pan large enough to take the rack on the stove over high heat and pour a little extra virgin olive oil in. When oil is nearly smoking, add the rack and hold it with tongs so that all the flesh side gets a good browning.

Reduce the oven temperature to around 60C holding the door ajar if necessary and return the veal to the oven. Rest the rack for about 30 minutes before serving.

Potato Gratin

Ingredients

500g bintje or other waxy potatoes

250mL pure whipping cream

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

20g unsalted butter melted

Method

Peel and cut the potatoes into 2mm thick slices, covering the slices with cream to prevent discolouration. Season the potato slices with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Brush the base and side of a shallow baking tray with melted butter.

Remove the potato slices from the cream and overlap them in lines down the dish until 2-3cm deep. Drizzle a little cream between each layer. Pour any remaining cream over.

Bake at 180C for 50-60 minutes or until lightly browned and tender.

With a side of brussels and speck, yum yum.

Loving the playpen

Jaeminkins is finally back to his usual self and no longer jetlagged. Now at 8.5 months he loves to move as he's starting to crawl. But his favourite past time is standing for long periods of time leaning on his musical table and hanging onto the playpen bars as you can see. I love how he's trying to eat the bars.

 He loves to amuse himself for long periods by banging his hands and especially his toys - on any surface over and over again. Luckily I haven't had to listen to pots and pans clanking yet.

 He loves reaching for toys and picking things up with his fingers, well more like a pincer grip rather than with the palm of his hand. He can easily rip paper and loves the target or any shopping catalogues for that reason.

He understands the words yes and no. He doesn't like it when I say no, as you can see by his not so happy reaction but it usually stops him from chewing his books to bits or putting those fingers into powerpoints.

 It's been more difficult at meal times as he's become very assertive about wanting to feed himself. So I'm experiencing the pursed lips and bursts of mmmmming as he tries to pick food up between his fingers and place it in his mouth.  Jaeminkins' mostly misses but its been a lot of fun cleaning up after him.....

Ice Bear Sculpture

 

After a week of miserable weather, I was itching to get out and I think Jaeminkins was a well. I read that there was going to be a life-sized melting ice sculpture of a hunting male polar bear which was going to be carved today and then left to melt over a period of 3-4 days with its bronze skeleton remaining at the front of Customs House Square. 

Miss V and I with our perspective bubs walked over to the Rocks, enjoying the sun and blue sky. During our walk we discovered a few dead ends, mostly due to renovation works which required us to backtrack a few times. 

When we finally got to Customs house, there was a crowd happening with many international news crew. Miss V and I watched British sculptor Mark Coreth carve up the ice sculpture. Apparently he started at 7am so when we were there it looked quite like a polar bear. It was life size measuring 2.2 metres high and 4 metres long.

The Ice Bear was to mark World Environment Day as the sculpture melted with a bronze skeleton remaining – a poignant metaphor for the human impact on our environment. Sydney Ice Bear will raise much-needed funds for the three partner environmental organisations, WWF-Australia, 1 million women and Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC). 

The Sydney Ice Bear is the sixth appearance of the inspirational sculpture which, according to Mark Coreth, highlights the important nexus between art and environment. Since 2009 as part of its world tour, Ice Bear has appeared in Copenhagen, London, Toronto, Montreal and Manchester, highlighting the urgent need for action on climate change http://www.icebearproject.org/.

The sculpture is on from 3-10 June and apparently is lit with LED’s at night as part of the Vivid Festival as well. Go check it out.

We went on to Harbour Kitchen and dined on a chilli dog and chips from Charlie & Co. I wasn't that impressed with the chilli dog, think it was the sausage and the lack of onions? Or perhaps it was thinking that takeway would be quicker and  instead we waited for ages and our bubs were not impressed.

Headed home and we let the boys, Jordan and Jaeminkins do their thing and all we could hear were cackles of laughter. Too cute.