Lemon Meltaways

Is it really Christmas without a good helping of home made shortbread on the scene? These delectable lemon meltaway shortbreads are adorable and festive looking, coated in a thick layer of icing sugar. The flavour has been amped up with the fresh addiction of lemon juice and lemon zest, taking this melt in your mouth biscuit to heightened levels. They are great for gift giving, especially for that last minute Christmas cooking, and are a pretty addiction to any Christmas entertaining table. Forget Christmas, these babies are to be made all year round, they're that good!

LEMON MELTAWAYS (Adapted from My Baking Addiction)

3/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup icing sugar, divided
1 1/2 tbsp lemon zest (2-3 lemons depending on size)
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp vanilla essence
1 3/4 cups + 2 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp corn flour
pinch salt

Preheat the oven at 180C.
Cream together the butter and 1/3 cup of the icing sugar until light and fluffy. Add the zest, juice and vanilla, and beat until all the ingredients come together and are smooth.
Combine the flour, corn flour and salt in a small bowl. While beating the butter mixture, gradually add the flour mixture, about 1/4 cup at a time until well incorporated.
Divide the mixture in half, and roll each into 1 1/2 inch logs. wrap both in plastic wrap and place in the freezer for 1/2 an hour to harden.
Take the rolls from the freezer one at a time and slice with a sharp knife into 1/4 inch rounds. Place them on greased and lined biscuit trays. Bake for 13-14 minutes, or until the bottoms begin to turn golden. Leave to cool on the trays for 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. When cool, use the remaining icing sugar in a bowl to coat the outside of each cookie.

NOTES: you can store these biscuits in an airtight container for up to one week.

Homemade Limoncello

If you were to ask what the most exciting thing I have made and tasted this year it would be this-heavenly, liquid gold. Lemony, sweet, alcoholic, utterly refreshing and served ice cold straight from the freezer, this home made limoncello is definitely a case of saving the best till last. It's a recipe with history, passed around Italy. I nabbed it from the glorious hardcover Italian cookbook Limoncello and Linenwater by Tessa Kiros, and she writes

 "This recipe is from Massimo, Giovani's friend, and he got it from his Sicilian friend's grandmother." 

Don't you just love recipes that have been passed on through numerous people and generations? You just know there's something special about it, something coveted. It just adds to the flavour.
This drink really is a labour of love. But food and drink always does taste better with lashings of passion and love poured into it, I am certain of it. I had blisters on my hands after spending hours peeling the lemon yellow off the pith with a potato peeler-but it was so worth it. I can not stress how worth it it was. Thankfully we made a double batch of this lovely drink, so that we could gift it to friends and family this Christmas. It's the ultimate homemade Christmas gift for anyone who enjoys a good drop and is a foodie lover.
We had been saving interesting liqueur bottles over the years for this very moment-after weeks of soaking the peel and waiting for it to settle, we finally got to bottle our very own home brewed limoncello. The feeling of satisfaction was beyond what I expected, especially after we had chilled it in the freezer and taken our first sips. Ahhhhhhhhhh! The perfect beverage to have on a hot summer's day.
Just to test how good our limoncello was, we poured a comparative shot glass of limoncello we had purchased from a well known boutique liqueur store in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. Theirs is a clear pure colourless liquid scattered with gold leaf and set in a cello shaped bottle. Fancy!
Ours is a clear, lemon coloured liquid, brilliant to the eye. In comparison, ours smells and tastes much more lemony, sweeter, with an alcoholic warmth at the end. The store bought one is less aromatic, and perhaps more alcoholically potent. The first impression is "Wow, strong alcohol! Mmmh, lemon."
It's the exact reverse for the home made limoncello.
I'm pretty biased, but I prefer our batch, as does my husband. That dash of love sure is a tasty addition. We hope to carry on our home made liqueur tradition to many future Christmases.And you may ask, what am I going to do with all those peeled lemons? Make old fashioned cloudy pink lemonade of course!

HOMEMADE LIMONCELLO (From Limoncello and Linenwater, by Tessa Kiros. pg. 17)

8 lemons
1 litre (4 cups) pure alcohol
1 kg sugar
1 litre (4 cups) water

Wash and scrub the lemons very well.
Pare them with a potato peeler, removing only the yellow of the skins (any white pith will make the limoncello bitter, so just skim off the yellow). Put the yellow skins in a wide mouthed glass carafe  with about a 3 litre capacity.
Pour the alcohol over the top and seal. Keep covered for one week, shaking occasionally to make sure all the peel is soaking.
Put the sugar in a saucepan with the water and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil and simmer for just under 10 minutes. Remove from the heat. Using a fine strainer or sieve, filter the alcohol into a jug and discard the lemon peel.
Slowly pour the strained alcohol into the hot sugar syrup and stir to combine thoroughly.
Cool completely.
Pour back into the carafe. Cover again and leave for 10-15 days.
Serve well chilled. You can even keep it in the freezer.

NOTES: We used vodka as the alcohol in this recipe. Most pure alcohols are between 96-98%. Makes about 2.25 litres. We made a double batch, and spent about $100 on vodka, sugar and lemons, and got about 4.5 litres of pure Italian bliss. (8 varied sized bottles!) You can store this in the freezer permanently for a super chilled drink-the alcohol cannot freeze.

The process in pictures:

 Just to show you how thinly you need to peel the rind from the lemon, the first slice I took out of the first lemon looked like the above. The peel had lots of white on the bottom, so skim lightly and peel like the rest of the lemon pictured above.

 Your peel should look like this. In the beginning, until I got the knack of peeling well, some of my peel had white on it. This makes the limoncello bitter, so try to avoid it. My small dose of white didn't seem to affect the flavour noticeably.

 All the peel place in glass container.

 Vodka is added to the peel.

 Bottle is sealed and left to sit for a week. Careful when you go to inhale from the bottle, it will burn your nostils!

 
After that the lemon is removed and water and sugar is boiled together to create a hot sugar syrup. This is added to the vodka. It then sits for 10-15 days before bottling.

 Hubby bottling the limoncello.

Voila! Chill and serve.

Dark Chocolate Ganache and Coconut Tart

Being in Australia, I missed out on all the foodie enjoyment associated with Thanksgiving-but that didn't stop me from making pie! I believe it's a Martha Stewart creation originally- and so simple, delicious and gluten free just as an added bonus. I love that only four ingredients are used to create this luscious silky dark chocolate tart. It's somewhat ganachy, with a gorgeous coconut crust-sort of like a giant, chocolate covered macaroon, really. It's impressive yet takes next to no effort or skill, and feeds an army due to its glorious richness. Could there be any more perfect a dessert for Christmas? Easy, quick, delicious, festive, impressive! Perfection.

DARK CHOCOLATE GANACHE & COCONUT TART (Adapted from Marin Mama Cooks)

4 tbsp butter, room temperature
2 cups dessicated coconut
350g dark chocolate
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Preheat your oven to 180C.
Place one third of the coconut into a medium bowl with the butter and stir thoroughly to combine. using your fingers, combine the remaining coconut with the butter coconut mix.
Line a 9in pie dish with baking paper. Press the coconut mixture firmly into the base and then up the sides of the dish, leaving the top edge more loosely packed and fluffy. Lay a sheet of foil underneath your pie dish and draw a circle around it. Cut off the edges so that you have a foil cover the size of the pie. Fold this in half and cut a half circle about two inches from the edge. Unfold to reveal a "o" shaped ring of foil. Place this on the pie so that it covers the top of the edges. This will stop it from over browning. Place the pie in the oven. You will need to carefully watch the pie, as ovens vary hence does the cooking time. Also what you cook in (glass, tin, ceramic etc) will alter the browning time. I cooked mine in a tin and it took about 12-15 minutes to start tuning a golden brown. Then remove the foil and cook for a further 4 minutes until just golden on the edges. Be careful not to let the bottom get too brown. If one area is getting too brown, cover in a piece of foil to stop the browning process in that area.
Remove from the oven and set aside to cool. When the crust is cool, chop up the chocolate and place it in a medium sized heat proof bowl. Place the cream in a small saucepan. Over a medium-low heat, bring the cream just to the boil.  Pour the cream over the chocolate, and let it sit for 10 minutes undisturbed. Mix together until fully incorporated and smooth and glossy. Pour into the coconut base and smooth the top if you need to.
Refrigerate until the chocolate has set (this will depend on the the of chocolate you use, it can take from 2 to 24 hours)

Serves: 10-12 (slice small as this tart is very rich)

Best Ever Beef Marinade

There are ten of us kids in the family. Well, not kids anymore, but we were kids when I was of the opinion that meat was disgusting. Twiggy little me thought it was like to hunting and killing the beast itself to get the knife through those rubbery, sinewy steaks. I felt like I was sawing away at it for hours on end just to get a bite. Okay, so there were a stack of us, and my parents couldn't give us prime steak every night. I didn't even know there was such a thing as tender, succulent meat until I had my first blissful meat experience on my dinner break when catering for Peter Rowland. My goodness! Safe to say I almost fell off my chair.
I had a brief and idiotic spell there for a while at university when I almost went vegetarian. Don't tell my husband. He will be scandalized. Honey, if youre reading this, forgive me! I momentarily lost my head trying to please everyone.
But the memory of that juicy steak woke me out of my reverie, and I decided not to follow that path after all.  It would only have been to please someone I was trying to impress, and wasn't worth impressing after all. I could have married into malnutrition and meatlessness for life. (Don't worry, I know all you vegans and vegetarians aren't horribly malnourished. What are you doing reading about steak? Get out of here!)
MEAT. It called me! I left that veggie man and took myself to the closest kitchen.
But...I had no idea how to handle the stuff, or get that juicy, tender quality I had once tasted in the back kitchen at Ripponlea Estate. How did they get that flavour?
I still don't know exactly how they got that steak so good. I figure it's probably a lot to do with a really great cut of meat, tenderizing and a the perfect chef.
But since finding out I'm super low in iron, I decided to get myself some awesome steak and get marinating. I found this wonderful recipe and got all excited over it. My husband is the king of meat, sauces and marinades, and I finally made something on his level in the savory department-I was pretty proud of myself and couldn't wait to share the recipe. It's now my go-to recipe when cooking up kebabs or beef steak. So. Delicious.

BEST EVER BEEF MARINADE (adapted from Allrecipes.com)

1/2 cup oil
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp french mustard (or Dijon if preferred)
1/2 tsp crushed garlic
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl. Whisk until combined. Add the raw steaks and marinate for 24 to 48 hours (I only had time to let it sit for 4 hours and it was still awesome). Remove from the marinade and cook until desired doneness. Serve.


NOTES: This recipe serves 4. I also used some of the left over marinate to concoct a gravy, adding a little corn flour to thicken and some gravy powder. Combine and cook until thick, and use over your veggies. Yum!

Cupcake Christmas Wreath

In celebration of Cupcake Day and that of Christmas, I have utilized a stack of left over cupcakes to create an edible wreath. What a great activity to do with the kids in the lead up to Christmas! If you're looking for things to do with kids in the Christmas holidays, here's a memorable and yummy activity that is bound to keep them busy and get them excited.
All you need is a number is small cupcakes-enough to make a circle, and perhaps an inner circle to make the wreath thicker. Then you will need enough green coloured icing mixture to cover the cupcakes, as well as a large "grass" nozzle. A grass nozzle has several holes in the end to create a grass effect, or in this case, a rough pine needle look. You can most likely pick one of these nozzles up from your local cake decorating store. To the finished wreath, I also added a large gold bow, and some artificial red berries to make it look more festive. The kids went wild for it!

CUPCAKE CHRISTMAS WREATH

Basic butter cake recipe for cupcakes (makes 12 or 24 mini cupcakes. I used mini ones for the wreath):

125g butter
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 cup SR flour
1/2 cup corn flour
2/3 cup milk
2 egg whites

Preheat the oven to 180C.
Line a 12 hole cupcake tin with 12 cupcake cases. Beat the butter and the sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg and beat until combined.
Sift the self raising flour and the corn flour and fold into the butter mixture along with the milk. Beat the eggwhites in a clean bowl until soft peaks form. Fold into the milk mixture (don't worry if the mixture looks a little curdled.)
Divide the mixture between the 12 cupcake cases. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden and just firm to touch. Leave for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. 

Basic Butter cream icing:

250g butter
2 1/2 cups icing sugar
2-3 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
green food colouring

Beat the butter until creamy. Sift the icing sugar into the butter mixture and whisk, along with enough milk to get a nice thick texture. Add the vanilla and the food colouring, and thoroughly combine. You may want to add a little more icing sugar if your icing does not hold shape.

Assembly:
Take all the wrappers off the completely cooled cupcakes. Arrange one circle of cupcakes, then use the remainder to add another inner circle Fill a ziplock bag fitted with a grass nozzle with the butter cream icing. Pipe onto the cupcake wreathe using until the tops are well covered. Decorate as desired with ribbons and holly to complete.

Check out other bloggers involved in cupcake day!

• Hot Cocoa Cupcakes by The Redhead Baker
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes by The Cooking Actress
• Vanilla Candy Cane Cupcakes by Noshing With The Nolands
• Gingerbread Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Nerds Cupcakes by Amy's Confectionery Adventures
• Vegan Midori Melon Cupcakes by NinjaBaker
• Chocolate Bourbon Cupcakes with Candied Butter Pecan Frosting by From Gate to Plate
• Dark Chocolate Rum Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream by Lemony Thyme
• Gingerbread cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting by Eva Bakes
• Cranberry Apple Cupcakes by The Pajama Chef
• Almond Joy Cupcakes by Our Eating Habits
• Buttered Rum Cupcakes by Adventures in All Things Food
• Maple Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Cone Head Cupcakes with Ice Cream Frosting by The Spiffy Cookie
• Candied Buddha's Hand-Eggnog Cupcakes by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Almond Joy Cupcakes by Food Lust People Love
• Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Marshmallow Frosting by Sew You Think You Can Cook
• Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting for 2 by Kate's Recipe Box
• Cranberry Cupcakes with White Chocolate Buttercream by Cheese Curd In Paradise
• Peppermint Patty Cupcakes by Comfortably Domestic
• Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Biscoff Marshmallow Buttercream by Making Miracles
• Chocolate Cupcakes with Red Velvet Frosting by {i love} my disorganized life
• Lemon Cupcakes by Miss Information
• Peppermint Hot Chocolate Cupcakes by Kosher Kitchen
• Peppermint Cream Cookie Cupcakes by Take a Bite out of Boca
• Cupcake Christmas Wreath by Lick the Spoon

Princess Castle Cake

I'm the possessor of one very strong willed, stubborn daughter. My husband is the possessor of one soft as a marshmallow wife. It's probably not an ideal combination. But we try to do our best and with lots of coaxing that wild little girl, we often get where we need to be.
But to make matters more difficult, she's a self-proclaimed princess. She even tells strangers with a poker face that she is in fact, a princess-as if they should know better.
As if I needed to feed the delusion, I agreed to making her a princess castle cake for her third birthday. We found a castle cake kit by Wilton which my daughter loved-it had a million spires and the price for the kit was a bit over the top too for a third birthday.
So I thought I'd wing it. She was beyond thrilled with the end result, although at one stage I was tearing my hair out trying to mend tearing fondant which was melting as I placed it. You will know why if you live in Brisbane. It's still spring and we've had days of 40C+ weather with tonnes of humidity. Not cake friendly. The back of the cake looks like a dogs breakfast. Thankfully no one's looking there!
I used a double mixture of Mississippi Mud Cake and made the base cake in a 15cm round tin, and three small round cakes in 7cm ramekins for the tall back tower part of the cake. These were covered in fondant and skewered into place. The towers can be made from mini sponge jam rolls but I used cardboard rolls, topped with mini waffle style ice cream cones. I used a texture mat to create the brick pattern on the fondant, and the other decorations were hand rolled vines and roses. I hope you enjoy the photo by photo cake tutorial. Shoot me any questions you might have. It's much easier than it looks and you can even get really clumsy and messy with it like me and easily cover the flaws-and it will make any princess wanna-be totally thrilled for weeks.

STEP BY STEP CASTLE CAKE PHOTO TUTORIAL

 Roll and cover your cake board in fondant.Trim the edges to neaten.

Crumb coat your first cake with a thin layer of buttercream icing and refrigerate for 10 minutes or so to harden.

 Place the rolled fondant on your cake. It doesn't have to be absolute;y perfect, as you can see mine isn't. This will be texturised with the texture mat, so it tends to look okay in the end even if a little bumpy. Measure the cake you're about to stack and place wooden skewers in place to secure the next cake. Make sure the skewers will not pop through the top of the next layer, I made that mistake!

Cover the tall cake with fondant and gently push it onto the skewers on the first cake. Please excuse the hideous lumps, at this stage I was near to tears because my fondant was misbehaving on layer two. We can hide all the nonsense in vines, roses and towers later on.

To make the pointed roofs of the towers you will need a packet of mini cones. These stand about 8-10cm tall. Roll out your contrasting fondant and wrap around the cone. Cut off any unsightly edges and make sure all the fondant sits nicely at the bottom of the cone and slightly overlaps at the final edge. Press gently to secure this edge.

 Before moving on to our cardboard roll towers, I rolled the roofs in a little shimmer dust and set aside. The same sort of method goes for the fondant covered rolls. Once covered in fondant, I gently rolled these babies over a brick texture mat, then trimmed the edges. This is a good time to texturise the main cakes also. Gently press the texture mat all around the sides of the cakes to get the brick or cobble stone pattern.

Stack the towers on the cake and secure them with wooden skewers. These should stick out somewhat, as we use them to hold the roofs in place too. The bottom towers can just sit there or be fixed with some edible glue if you prefer.

Use the skewers to position the roof part to each tower. I found these fine just balanced so, but you could use edible glue to secure them further if you need to move your cake around a bit or take it in the car. I used edible glue to secure the roofs on the bottom two towers, as there are no skewers in these two.

 See, all those huge imperfections are melting away as we add detail! Woop!

 

Add a door, windows and any other details you like. I added twisted braid to the bottoms of the bottom towers, the centre join of the cakes and also the bottom of the top tower to give a bit of fluidity. I matched it with the tower roofs and the door trim. I also added glitter to the spires and topped them with pearl cashous. I added vines and roses that I had made earlier on. (The best way to make the vines is to roll flat some green fondant and cut off thin strips of it.) I added leaves to the vine by cutting little heart shapes from the same green fondant, and squishing the pointy ends into more of a point.

My Daughter Vienna Rose, the happiest little princess with her castle.

Orange and Beetroot Ice Cream

I've never been into weird food. Lamb's brains, liver, bacon flavoured soda. I'll pass.
I'm anxious when I hear about people adding cauliflower to their sweets, and even have my reservations abut zucchini in chocolate cakes, although I hear at least that one is quite nice.
So, adding pureed beetroot to ice cream is a real leap for me. I happen to love beetroot, despite its staining tendencies, and fell in love with the thought of churning hot pink to fuchsia coloured ice cream in my machine.
I figured someone had probably already invented beetroot ice cream, so I googled it and found a recipe for it on a lovely blog. The pictures were amazing, and yes, the ice cream was fuchsia!
Somehow mine didn't turn out so hot pink, but it was a lovely shade of pink, and tasted even better than I thought it would. When you hear that a vegetable has been added to ice cream, it can make you pretty weary- so I have to say I was absolutely pleasantly surprised. Of course you are all wondering what it tastes like. Well the first flavour that hits you is that of oranges-a delightful citrus that hints at marmalade and is simultaneously fresh. There are subtle notes of beet on the end. I wouldn't go as far to say that you can pick out the flavour distinctly, but there are definitely beetroot qualities, a certain earthiness, a tang. There are no strong flavours, it is a very smooth and harmonious combination, a delicate quality to the ice cream, along with a silky smoothness that lacks in many home made ice creams.

ORANGE AND BEETROOT ICE CREAM  (Adapted from Saveur)

2 cups milk
4 tsp corn flour (or corn starch)
1 1/4 cup thickened or heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp light corn syrup (or golden syrup)
pinch salt
peel of 1 orange
3 tbsp cream cheese
1/2 cup pureed beetroot (I used beetroot from a 450g can, drained.)

In a small bowl, place 1/4 cup of the milk with the corn flour and set aside In a medium saucepan, place the remaining milk cream, sugar, syrup and salt and whisk to combine.
Bring to the boil over medium-high heat. Add the orange peel and cook for 4 minutes Stir the milk-cornflour mixture until combined, and add to the saucepan. Return to the boil and cook, stirring until thick, for about 2 minutes. Remove about 1/4 cup of the hot milk mixture and place in a small bowl with the cream cheese. Combine thoroughly until smooth. Add this to the saucepan. Stir in the pureed beetroot.
Chill the mixture until completely cold. I left mine overnight in the refrigerator. Then strain the mixture to remove the beetroot and orange peel. Follow the manufacturers instructions on your ice cream machine for the final step. When churned, place in the freezer for several hours to freeze before serving.

Makes about 1 litre