Hot Cross Buns and Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone! I used this recipe from http://www.taste.com, see http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/7695/hot+cross+buns.  But as all my spices were mixed up on my spice rack, I used Chinese 5 spice powder instead of mixed spice and added extra cinnamon and probably cardamon powder.  If you read the reviews at the end of the recipe it does say add more spices would benefit the buns greatly and they were right !   These buns are awesome!  My hubby loves it and we made 12 buns, gave 4 away and now there’s just one bun left.  Should we wait until next Easter for another round?  Here is the recipe taken from the website with my tinkering in colour 🙂  Hope you find it as easy as I did, though time consuming (a little)!  It was worth all the effort !!  (which wasn’t a lot btw)

Ingredients

• 4 cups plain flour
• 2 x 7g sachets dried yeast
• 1/4 cup caster sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons mixed spice or Chinese 5 Spice (my addition) or additional spices like cinnamon, cardamon etc.  
• pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups currants
• 40g butter
• 300ml milk
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

• Flour paste

• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 4 to 5 tablespoons water

• Glaze

• 1/3 cup water
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• Teaspoon or two of cinnamon powder (my addition too!) 

 Here is a picture of how it looked before it went into the oven.  I don’t really know how to make bread but I have to say that I am proud of myself that this experiment was a success.  Kneading wasn’t very hard.  I felt I got a feel for it in that you have to make sure that the dough is smooth at the end.  So I didn’t time myself how long I kneaded the dough and to be honest, I just went with my intuition.  Later when the buns were in the oven (haha pun not intended!) I realised I didn’t know how to tell when bread was cooked.  Apparently, you can tell when bread is cooked when you knock them and they sound hollow!

Learn something new each day 🙂

Lime Butter Cake .. with love

I felt like making boiled raisin fruit cake this morning instead of having the supermarket blueberry muffins, which were not very nice 😦  But we didn’t go to the supermarket to get the necessary dried figs, apricots and raisins.  Instead, I dug deep into our fridge and found a chug of butter.. so why not a butter cake for tea time?  Also saw a left over sad looking lime on the microwave and decided to combine to make lime butter cake 🙂  I was careful not to be over zealous with the lime as I was with the cheese cake (which was rather limey I have to say).  It turned out really nice!  Light and fluffy with a tinge of lime.  Also I ran out of self raising flour (I got until 1 and a half cup).  So for the last cup, I used 2 tsps of baking powder to 1 cup of plain flour.  The photo is all mine but the ingredients and links are courtesy from the websites, and the sentence in pink is what I did different from the website recipe – hey creativity right?  🙂  Hope you enjoy your Sunday afternoon tea.

Ingredients (serves 12)

• 250g butter, softened
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
• 3 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups self-raising flour
• 2/3 cup milk

Recipe is courtesy from taste.com:  http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/19421/butter+cake

Also check out Exclusively Food’s version: http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2009/11/butter-cake-recipe.html

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease and line an 8cm-deep, 19cm (base) square cake pan with baking paper.
2. Using an electric mixer, cream butter, caster sugar and vanilla in a medium bowl on medium-high speed until light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating to combine. Add half the flour. Stir to combine. Add half the milk. Stir to combine. Repeat with remaining flour and milk.  The only thing I did different was to squeeze half a lime and grated lime rind after adding the first round of four and milk. 

4. Spread mixture into prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Stand in pan for 10 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Dust with icing sugar (optional). Serve.

New York Baked Lime Cheesecake Recipe — The Cake Mistress

New York Baked Cheesecake Recipe: From Jamie Oliver’s America — The Cake Mistress.

Had a craving for NY baked cheesecake.  I was a little concerned that the cheesecake should be baked because I am not supposed to be eating raw ingredients.  Found this recipe online which looks good!  Made it and it’s going into the freezer for the next two hours!

Ingredients

350g Digestive biscuits
120g Unsalted butter, melted
900g Cream cheese, softened (can use light or low-fat, but NOT fat-free)
150g Caster sugar
5 large eggs
125ml Fresh Lime juice (5-6 limes)

The directions are pretty straight forward.  Summary: Blend digestive biscuits then mix in the melted butter.  Spread evenly over base of the 24cm spring foam pan.  Place pan in fridge to allow base to set.  Mix cream cheese with electric mixer until silky soft.  If cream cheese still firm, place the mixing bowl in sink of hot water and/or mix it in a sink of hot water, which was what I did.  Then add caster sugar, mix well.  Add eggs one by one and mix after each addition.  Finally mix in the lime juice (I probably added too much lime juice because it ended up tasting like lime cheesecake!).  Pour into pan and stick it in the oven to bake for 45 minutes.  I didn’t add the meringue topping because I don’t like meringue but the cheesecake looks good as is.

Just baked from the oven!

A slice of lime & heaven!

My Friday the 13th Cheesecake

Classic Baked Vanilla Cheesecake Recipe

This is my Friday the 13th Cheesecake.  Followed this recipe to the bone and it’s looking good.  Can’t wait for it to pop out of the oven.. one and a half hour later… and it has..

My Friday the 13th cheesecake attempt

For this attempt, I only used the blender / food processor.. ain’t it great?  Simple and sweet.  But when I place the 300g sour cream, the two packets of cream cheese and caster sugar, the blender didn’t work so well.  I had to shake, shake shake shake, shake it.. for it to mix properly.  I suspected because the cheese was still a little cold below room temperature.  But once I added the eggs and vanilla essence, the mixture blended like magic !  The other tricky and more tiring aspect of this process was the lining of the base.  See the brown sides – that’s the Arnott’s Nice biscuits and butter.  It was pretty tricky lining the sides – quite hard.  OK I almost broke into a sweat!  But otherwise this cake is easy peasy 🙂  Definitely worth a go to impress the unsuspecting partner !  

A slice of heaven

See:  Classic Baked Vanilla Cheesecake Recipe – Taste.com.au