Healthy chocolate crackles, with coconut oil

Phew, so I've fiiiinally put a new template in. 

Wow, it's like drawing blood, it takes me ages to find something that suits me, I don't go for bright ones, except on other people's blogs haha, I don't really want graphics, I want two columns, one of them being wider than average, I want a white background for posting, I want decent size headings on my sidebar and I 'spose I'm just extra fussy.

 No kidding, right?

This one's not perfect, the text is a bit light but overall it does not offend me, which is the main thing. 

We'll see how it goes.

Aaaanyway, gotta share a recipe.

Remember chocolate crackles? Oh yeah, mmm mmm mmmmm.

Well, the original recipe contains copha, correct? Or, if you're in New Zealand, it's kremelta.

What is copha/kremelta? 

According to Wiki', it's a form of vegetable fat shortening made from hydrogenated coconut oil.

And, it contains soy.

Both big no nos when it comes to me cooking for my family.
(The hydrogenated part of the coconut oil is what's bad, coconut oil itself is lovely stuff)

So I did some tweaking and here is my version.

Chocolate crackles, done my way.

4 cups of wholewheat puffed rice

 (just plain, puffed, wholewheat rice. Found this in my regular grocery store in the health food aisle)

3/4 cup of icing sugar

(this was cut down from 1 cup, next time I'll try 2/3 cup and use fine ground rapadura)

1 cup of desiccated coconut

5 tablespoons of good quality cocoa powder

250 grams of coconut oil, melted

(I like using coconut oil, you can read about coconut oil on the Weston A. Price foundation site)

Method

Mix all ingredients together and spoon into paper cupcake cases.

Refrigerate till hard.

Store in the fridge or freezer.

And oh my, they are GOOD!

Next time I'll spoon them into my silicone cupcake molds, which I can never get cupcakes out of but these little guys pop out of their papers once they're refrigerated, so I'll save the paper and dump them straight in a box from the silicone molds instead.

Wholegrain puffed rice gives this treat just a little more nutrition than usual, it's a couple of steps closer to a whole food than rice bubbles, that's for sure.

And one more tip, be careful adding extra rice if your mixture appears too 'wet'. I've made this twice now and the 'wetter' mix I had the first time gives a much more melt-in-the-mouth experience, such as that of traditional chocolate crackles.

The second batch I made drier and it's more chewy and also more prone to falling apart, which the first batch did not.

Enjoy!

Ok, wanna see my recipe for coconut oil chocolate? Just as yummy as these chocolate crackles but grain free, great if you're paleo, or primal.


There is a link to it it my side bar or you can find it here: Coconut oil chocolate.

Do you know bread is being fortified now with folate?

I know, I know, I can't seem to make myself stop going on about food and what's in it these days.

And I recently found out, through an innocuous tv show on food followed by a little research, that commercially made bread is being fortified with extra folate, as of September just gone. Here in Australia anyway; seems like NZ is managing to put it off for the moment pending further investigation.

Smart.

The risks of extra folate to the general, non-pregnant population appear to be unknown.

Hellooooo, is anyone actually out there, in decision-making-for-the-entire-population land???



So, get to making your own if you can....the recipe for this is here.

And it can be made with wheat flour just as easily as spelt, no adjustment required.

I christened them!

With Billy's vanilla vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting...

This is quite a good recipe, but reading through the comments a few people managed to get it wrong. If you've ever made cupcakes you'll find the way the recipe is put together a little odd......so I used my own tried and true method instead.

And tweaked the ingredients just a tiny bit too.

Yes, once again I cannot just blindly follow a recipe. However, apart from the fact my buttercream separated (my fault), they turned out admirably. So much so that I might put this on my master list of cupcake flavours.

Now in the interests of sharing good cupcakeness around, I'll put up my version of this recipe sometime over the next few days. Vanilla is a classic after all, and we should all be able to pull a great vanilla recipe out of our sleeve at short notice.

Right?

Oh and the cupcake courier works admirably, hubbby's taking them to work tomorrow in it.
And it has the added bonus of keeping small fingers out...

Lets make a cake!

Hubby's birthday late last week so of course we needed a cake. To my kids, birthdays are all about the cake (apart from the presents of course) and "what cake should I have for my next birthday" is a topic brought up all too often.

So having exhausted my favourites due to father's day, mother-in-law's birthday and MY birthday, I was keeping my eyes open for something new.

What I came across on Lick the bowl good, was this blueberry lemon marble layer cake. Now, mine doesn't look quite like that, due to fact I made 2 layers instead of three, therefore had leftover blueberry preserve which I mixed into the icing. And I put a layer of sweetened whipped cream in the middle, 'cos I know hubby likes whipped cream. And the actual icing called for more butter than was in the cake, so I ditched that and just made a more simple one with a little butter. So true to form, it's not all that much like it's namesake.

The kids of course,were in on nearly every act:

It was delicious and not very difficult to make. Worth the effort.

Speaking of cakes and refined white sugar, I'm going to try some rapadura, which is apparently unrefined dried sugar cane (or sugar cane juice?), I need to find out some more about it. But it retains all it's nutrients and can (apparently) prevent the insulin swings brought on by consumption of refined sugar.

Jo at Quirky cooking gives a run down on different sweeteners including rapadura. It's something I want to look into in my quest to feed my family foods that are less refined......above cake excluded, obviously.

Watch this space.

We are Geelong, the greatest team of all....

Not my personal opinion but a line from the Geelong team song, Geelong being the team that won the AFL Grand Final on Saturday.

I know, it's not relevant to most outside Victoria and really, I have to say it's not that relevant to me either.
But hubby being an avid AFL fan and having no tv at the moment (due to using media center and an upgrade to windows 7 means an upgrade is needed for the video card.....or some such thing) he packed up both kids and went across town to a mates house to watch the game.

Without me.

Woohoo, relaxing kid and hubby free afternoon, here I come!!

So I managed to ignore my pc for the most part and I got some actual, real things done.

Organised some fabric and my WIP stash in my new basket storage system (....freezer baskets that I broke the law to scavenge off the nature strip during hard rubbish collection week, hard core criminal that I am...)



Finished one of the WIPs...



And tidied up the remainder of THIS mess which came about after a friend of ours, The Nut Bloke, asked if I'd make some cupcakes and ice them in football team colours for his market stall on Grand Final Saturday.

They had to be made and decorated on Friday, because The Nut Bloke was picking them up Friday evening for a Saturday morning market.
I ended up working on Friday, kids in tow, so I made the cupackes at work then raced home to decorate them. Hence the mess.
H is enjoying one of the rejects with some good ol' chocolate ganache, after the order went out.
And yes, he's standing there in his jocks, despite the fact it rained nearly all day and maintained a top temperature of about 10c.

And in the the ensuing rush and fluster I forgot to take a picture of my football coloured cupcakes. Decorated in stripes of either blue and white buttercream or red, white and black buttercream. Of course.



Wednesday tomorrow, baking day. Hmmm, what to make?
I'll be sifting through these sites for something that tickles my fancy, cupcake or otherwise:

52 cupcakes

Lick the bowl good

Cookies and cups

Mommy? I'm hungry!

Quirky cooking

and

Crazy about cakes

Have a look at the photos of Ashley's cupcake decorating party at the above blog, such a great idea for a party.
I wonder if I could adapt it to boys? At what age would something like this stop being cool for boys? I know H who is 4, would looooove to do this, but when he's 7? Or 10? Hmmm.

Really good chocolate cupcakes - finally!

I think I have finally found a really good chocolate cupcake recipe. I have tried quite a few but never found just the right mix of flavour, texture and perfect dome-ness....and this recipe has all three.

See? They're chocolaty....

And perfectly domed.

Un-iced as yet, I'm thinking maybe some chocolate ganache will top them off nicely. They don't have any actual chocolate in them as they are flavoured with cocoa, so a rich topping will bring them to just the right level of gorgeous chocolate-ness.

Now, if you want to try the recipe out, may I suggest you add the sour cream into the wet mixture before you add the flour. (The recipe does not state when to add it.)

And a stick of butter is about 113.5 grams, so for 3 sticks of butter I used 340 grams.

Wednesday is my serious baking day because that is the day I have both boys in daycare, as a leftover from when I was working out of home. 

It's my recharge day, my sanity day, the day that as much as I love my kiddies, I REALLY look forward to. The house is filled with silence. Things stay where I put them. I can pee in peace. I don't need to wipe noses and butts and break up fights. Or haul the baby up from sitting on his older brother. Again. 
It's also my clean the house day and my 'important things that require concentration so no kids around' day.

The rest of the time my life is filled with this...



and this...



and quite a lot of this lately too...



And this, if the ladder is left anywhere accessible after fixing the sliding doors that have been slid too enthusiastically one too many times...



I'll stop there shall I?

They're always on the go, my little munchkins, and they wear mummy out. Especially after the all-nighters my lil guy has been pulling lately.....but that's another story.

Let just say, I REALLY LOOK FORWARD TO WEDNESDAYS!

Smarties, smarties, yum, yum yum!

I've gotta say, I looove smarties, or pebbles to you kiwis. M & Ms too, but now that I know smarties have no artificial colours, I prefer them over the other. Mind you, the colours are not perfect, not quite as vibrant as their rival but I will give up bright glaring colours in the interests of good health. Overlooking the fact that they still have the same amount of fat and sugar in them that they always did, ahem.

Well, I made some cupcakes in honour of my birthday and decorated them with guess what? Right. Only because my piping the buttercream technique still leaves a lot to be desired, read, was a total flop. I will, very soon, get some decent piping nozzles. I will. I WILL. But I haven't yet.

So I started off delicately placing one smartie into the center of what was supposed to be a rosette of buttercream but looked more like a buttercream cow pat, but after a few of those I thought bugger it, tipped the smarties out and upended the iced cupcakes into them. And the end result was it looked like I did exactly that.

See?





Something else I have discovered along the way for any Thermomixers out there, do not try and make icing sugar from raw sugar in your thermomix and then try and make buttercream icing with that icing sugar. I don't care what my thermomix handbook says, it is NOT as fine as icing sugar, so twice my buttercream has been grainy, before I cottoned onto that fact. Which reminds me, I forgot to buy any REAL icing sugar at the store when I shopped today. Dang.
And the raw sugar imparts it's own flavour and colour tint too.

Note to self: write ICING SUGAR on the shopping list.

The other thing I did with the enormous bag of smarties I bought was to make smartie cookies, which was the actual reason I bought the smarties in the first place. Honest. And I really did need such an enormous bag. Mmm hmm, I did.

Yum, but not good enough to share the recipe. I'll have to eat them, in the name of research....

Ok, I did share it as it was fairly moreish. It's here,
at Gone Chocco, check out all the chocolate goodness on this Aussie site!

White chocolate cupcakes with raspberry icing....or frosting, if you prefer

This is my latest creation, white chocolate and raspberry, ooh yum yum!

Easy to make and very delish too....

Mmm mmm!


This recipe is a keeper, it is veeery easy to make, it certainly makes plenty, they taste fantastic and, they freeze well too. What more could you ask for?

The following recipe is from the Crabapple Cupcake Bakery book.



White chocolate mud cupcakes

4 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
500gm butter, chopped
2 cups milk
4 cups caster sugar
300gm white chocolate, chopped
4 eggs, whisked
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• Preheat over to 155 c and place cupcake liners into molds. (Recipe said 24 cupcakes, I got more like 48, so I must be using smaller liners)

• Sift flour and baking powder together in a large bowl, make a well in the center and set aside.

• Put milk, butter, caster sugar and white chocolate in a metal bowl and place over large saucepan of simmering water. Stir continuously using a wooden flat bottomed spoon, until choc has melted and sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

• Use a rubber spatula to fold the eggs and vanilla into the cooled chocolate mixture. Pour this mixture into the well in the flour and fold together until well combined.

• Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 full and bake for 25-30 minutes or until skewer inserted comes out clean.

Now, I was a bit stumped as to what to ice these with, the book makes them in dariole molds and pours ganache over them, then ices the tops with a very simple mixture to drip down the sides.

I wanted something simpler and more cupcakey so to Master Chef Google I turned.....
and found raspberry frosting and raspberry buttercream frosting.

Right, raspberry it is.
I went with the first frosting recipe, mainly because I didn't have cream, and it worked a treat.

Although I didn't strain the berries as per the recipe (forgot) so my icing is a lot deeper in colour and has bits in it.
Which I like, except for the fact that the colour and texture makes me think of sausage meat, which is sooooo not something I want smeared on a cupcake. Also it didn't pipe well, although I am still using my too small piping nozzles, so bigger ones may fix that problem.

The flavour is wonderful, definitely reminiscent of raspberries, but to eliminate the mental image of sausage meat on cupcake, next time I will use less berries and straaaiiiiiin them well.



Here are my efforts to apply the icing....

Yep, I still need practise.

But YUM!

Apple custard tea cakes

I made some of these yesterday...

Apple custard tea cakes

Don't they look great, all round and puffy, just promising to be moist and moreish underneath. And they were, mmmmmmm. Yes, were, because there are none left now, hehehe!

I found the recipe on sugarfishblog, posted by Ruth.

I did change a couple of things just to work with what I had around and what I know my family will eat. You'll notice no apple on top? I know kids (and hubby) would more than likely just peel it off. Yes, I am embarrassed to admit that....

I used wholemeal spelt flour, no custard powder (didn't have any) so just increased the flour by that amount, I only had one egg so added an amount of pureed apple approx equivalent to an egg, and used some leftover thick custard I'd made in the thermomix.
And mixed it all in the thermomix.
And I didn't do the butter and cinnamon sugar thing at the end either.

So really, they are probably only vaguely similar to Ruth's recipe
but gee they were droolingly good nonetheless.

Have a spare 10 minutes? 

Go and whip up a batch, then call me and I'll come over to help you devour them. 
See you soon!

Anzac biscuits -mmmmmm

This is another of mine and the kids favourite cookie recipes, so easy to make and very moreish. They also freeze well when cooked so you can make them in bulk. And, I have discovered I can make them in my thermomix, which I have to admit feels like the height of laziness, seeing as how they're super easy to make in the beginning.

Do you want to see my Squidoo page on thermomix? Check it out below...

Thermomix - Now you're Cooking!


As usual, I digress. Here's the recipe made the regular, stovetop way.


Anzac biscuits

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup plain flour
2/3 cup sugar/rapadura
3/4 cup dessicated coconut
2 tablespoons golden syrup
125grams butter
1 teaspoon baking (bicarb) soda
2 tablespoons hot water

• Preheat your oven to 160c (320f)
• Place golden syrup and butter in largish saucepan over low heat and melt.
• Dissolve baking soda in the hot water and add to the butter mixture.
• Add all dry ingredients and mix well.
• Place tablespoons of mixture onto greased baking trays and flatten slightly. Leave a little room for spreading.
• Bake for about 8-10 minutes until golden brown.
• Cool on tray for 10 minutes then transfer to baking rack to cool completely.

Now hide them away before the kids and hubby see them!

The best chocolate chip cookies

Oh yum, everyone in my family loves and requests these, so I make big ones for hubby and mini sizes for the kidlets.



Pretty easy to whip up, especially if you have a good electric mixer. My mixer is the sort that sits on the bench and does all the work itself: have to say, I love it. It's a Sunbeam Mixmaster, given as a gift: have a look at these reviews for it though, seems not everyone is as happy with it as I am.


 But I'm sure, if you get a benchtop style electric mixer, you'll never go back. 
Especially if you're as lazy as me, hehehe! Just do your homework first. Anyway, I digress, here's the recipe....


Killer Chocolate Chip Cookies

125 grams of softened butter
100 grams (1/2 cup) firmly packed brown sugar
110 grams (1/2 cup) caster sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
270 grams (1 3/4 cup) self-raising flour
190 grams (1 cup) chocolate bits

• Pre-heat oven to 180c. Line 2 large trays with baking paper.
• Place butter and sugar in large bowl, beat till fluffy and pale.
• Add egg and vanilla and beat well.
• Add flour and chocolate bits and mix well.
• Roll heaped teaspoons full into balls and place on tray 5 cm apart. Press down gently.
• Bake 15 minutes until golden at edges. Cool on tray.

My tips:

Make a double quantity of dough, it freezes well.....and tastes great as dough too. Especially after it's thawed out and sitting in fridge waiting to be baked, and you need a sweet fix........mmmmmm.

You can use any variety of chocolate, milk, dark or white.

If you run out of egg, I have discovered that using pureed fruit gives almost the same result.

If you don't use self-raising flour (I don't), you can use the measurements of one cup of flour to one rounded teaspoon of baking powder. You can also make your own baking powder.

Oh, and try not to eat them all at once!




Update


I now try and make these cookies ever so slightly healthier:

• I use 3/4 cup rapadura instead of the 1 cup of sugar.
• I sub' wholemeal spelt flour for the regular white flour.
• I also leave out a wee bit of the butter and add a little kefir instead and let it sit on the bench overnight, in an effort to get rid of some of the phytic acid (phytic acid being an anti-nutrient)

My favourite birthday cake recipe

Like many Australian's I am sure, I am the proud owner of a somewhat vintage copy of the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book. Most of my childhood birthday cakes were made from this, so it brings back many fond memories. I have of course, broken out this book as my own children's birthdays roll around, but I have not had much success with the butter cake recipe. I have managed to find a decent substitute though, it works very well, is extremely easy to make and delicious to boot.

It came out of one of my Donna Hay magazines that I was given a subscription to a while back. And while I love the look of these mags, they have not been a whole lot of use to me except for this particular recipe.

So, here it is:


Simple Lemon Cake

220 grams butter, melted
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons grated lemon rind
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder

• Heat oven to 180c.
• Place melted butter, eggs, sour cream, caster sugar and lemon juice and rind in the bowl of an electric mixer and mix until well combined.
• Sift flour and baking powder over bowl and beat 3-4 minutes or until smooth.
• Spoon mix into shallow 20cm x 30cm tine (I use a 20cm x 20cm), that has been lined with baking paper.
• Bake for 35 minutes or until golden and cooked through.
• Cool in the tin.

And here is the finished result, from my youngest's recent 1 year birthday.



Haha, no, it doesn't come out of the tin quite like that, it does require a certain amount of butchering first.

It's not quite perfect, I don't know how my mum ever got hers to look as good as they did, and unfortunately she's not around now to ask.

Fortunately for me, this year my soon to be 4 year old has requested a runway cake, with a helipad on one side. Ok, even I can do that. Maybe the poor kid doesn't have much faith in my cake making abilities....he probably remembers the accidentally green, demented looking teddy bear cake I made when he was two. Poor kid, scarred for life.

Oooh, check out these jelly bean cookies!

As I was jumping from blog to blog, following various links, I happened across these bite-sized jelly bean cookies. 

How cute are they?? 

I thought they'd be great for a kiddie's birthday party, and seeing as H is turning 4 this month, I have my mind turned to party food.


This is them...

Jelly bean cookies. 

I will have to go on a hunt for the right cutter though, I think the author said she used a very small easter egg shaped cutter. 

Hmmmm, where to go?

Phew, done for today

Today was a busy one, just finished up in the kitchen and it's after 10pm. I was having a baking session, rolling out gingerbread cookies and little cheesy crackers for kiddie snacks. Fiddly but satisfying, the bikkie tins are now full, awaiting the next assault of "I'm huuuuuungry!" A fairly constant refrain around here.

But I do wonder, when will I get back to my sewing machine? By the time I'm done in the evening, all I'm good for is sitting in front of the pc for a short while. My eldest, H, has requested a Superman babushka style doll for his birthday, complete with baby Superman in the front pocket. I made him a Batman one for Christmas, which was very well received, so had grand plans to expand the range. Well, a range of one, haha....no wait, I did do one for my niece when she turned one last year. I made a fairly simple little lady, complete with serene face, and baby tucked into her pocket. Just need to find my motivation to start said project.

And a bit of house hunting today, we saw a promising one, my sewing room may yet become a reality......

I'm feeling a little 'mummy guilt' this evening too, it's been TOO busy, running round madly all day, not spending enough playing time with the kiddies. I will try to assuage the guilt tomorrow...