Ms Fifikins

@scarletwords’s Peanut Butter Cup cookies

Originally uploaded by fifikins

Yep, perhaps a picture does tell a thousand words! Well a blog post can!

Remember those chain letters you got as a child… choose 3 friends and pass it on? Well I feel this is kinda like a blog version! The amazing Scarletwords got it from Married/Single Parent and now you can get it from me! But make sure you tell these two wonderful bakers that you baked it! Oh and then blog it and link it back or something. Or not! You choose!

[edit: Oh and I don't plan on eating them all! I was going to take them to a South African Braai (barbecue) tomorrow but the braai has been cancelled so we are taking them to the mental health crisis team who have to work.]

I commented the other day that instead of putting in so many hours at work I would love to be baking as I use baking as a method of relaxing.

Then yesterday I was reading Orangette, the gorgeous food Blog by Molly and empathising with her about the multitude of banana bread recipes and how so many of them call to be baked. I too have a thing for baking with bananas! Whilst we love bananas, often we have some left over. I tend to freeze them and use them in smoothies direct from the freezer, but ones that don’t make it there ususally make it into some form of banana bread or cake or muffin!

The thing that struck me about the recipe posted at Orangette was that you got dry ingredients, then wet ingredients, then mixed them together before baking. Now I don’t know about you, but that just screamed muffin to me! So having leftover bananas and a limited time before starting work I went the muffin path!

Dry… including a little extra cinnamon as I was worried about so much sugar and honey…

Wet… I scored with 2 very yellow eggs as well. Love it when that happens!

Mixed together and smelling divine!

Into the oven…

25 minutes later 16 gorgeous looking muffins!

Oh… and a minute after that…

The verdict is divine! More a light cake consistency than a muffin, but they are still hot! And not too sweet either!

My name is Fiona and I am a cookbook-aholic.

Now there is no order to these books at the moment and they are two deep on the bottom shelf and stacked up on the top. Oh and I have another case that has a shelf of Womens Weekly cookbooks and cooking magazines. And there are 4 or 5 cookbooks next to my bed- nighttime reading of course!

What I find really interesting is comparing recipes for the same thing in different books. One of my favourite books is Nigella’s How to Eat. Apart from Nigella’s lyrical style, I love reading the history behind so many of the recipes. One of these is her Clementine Cake. Now Nigella refers to the great Claudia Roden’s Orange and Almond Cake. Of course, in the back of my mind I remember Bill Granger’s Mandarin and Almond Cake recipe, which MIML™ and I enjoyed at dinner with Maadonna and Facibus in Canberra recently. And yes, Stephanie Alexander has a variation of Roden’s in her Cook’s Companion.

But cooking is about reinventing things, finding shortcuts and making things your own. Now I am not saying that I am anywhere in the same league as Nigella, Claudia, Bill or Stephanie, but I present to you Fifikins’s Damp Blood Orange and Almond Cake.

I found blood oragnes in Woolies of all places. My first variation on a theme is not to boil them for 2 hours, but to microwave them. Yes, I prick them first, place them in a microwave safe dish and cover and nuke on high for 10 minutes.

After that, let them cool, remove any pips and process the rest, skin and all, in a food processor until, well chopped!

Then beat eggs and sugar until thick and creamy before stirring in almond meal and baking powder.

Now at this stage I realised that I had overdone it on the sugar- bloody metric to imperial conversion! (Note to self- invest in some metric weights for your ballance scales, Fifi!) Oh and I had also doubled everything- the kids complain that I never bake for them so I figured one cake for work, one for home!

Mix in the pulped blood oranges and stir to combine.

Pour into lined springform tins and bake for an hour and a bit.

One cake was devoured at work, and the kids are pestering me to stop typing here so we can cut the other one. OK! I won’t complain!

So here you have it- easy as and delicious! Who could ask for more!

My only comment is that it is not as pink or red as I imagined it might have been using the blood oranges, oh and the extra sugar? Not noticed at all- win all round!

Fifikins’s Damp Blood Orange and Almond Cake

I have included the doubled recipe here as it is always worth making two!I have also included the ‘correct’ amount of sugar as opposed to the 4oz extra I added! Oh and I have left it in metric!

6 blood oranges (about 750g total weight)
12 eggs
500g sugar
500g almond meal
2 heaped tsp baking powder

Put the blood oranges in a microwave dish, cover and nuke on high for about 10 minutes, or until mushy and soft! Break in half and remove any pips. Then blitz in a food processor until pulped. Of course you could chop by hand!

Preheat the oven to 190ºC and grease and line 2 23cm Springform tins.

Beat the eggs and sugar until thick and luscious then stir in the almonds and baking powder. Mix well then add the blood oranges. Stir to combine then pour into tins and bung in the oven for an hour or so. Mine took an hour and 10 minutes. They are cooked when they come away from the side of the tin and and are firm to the touch on top. You can try inserting a skewer and checking for uncooked mix, but they are designed to be a damp, moist cake so this can be deceiving.

Leave to cool in the tin before storing. This is a cake that improves with age.

Oh and my next experiment may just leave out the baking powder. I suspect this makes it more fragile. And I have also found this recipe which I want to try with some more blood oranges. Nom nom nom!

I love baking. Always have. Whilst I love cooking and have gained enough confidence to cook from my head with some great results, baking is very structured and ordered and that is what I like.

But… I also like easy recipes! We had a morning tea at work yesterday for Jeans for Genes day. I baked Damp Orange and Almond Cake on Wednesday night (yes, blog post to follow!) and wanted something to just throw together that would have ok results!

I found this recipe from an email from one of the Supermums mentioned in my Friendship blog post. It was sent it to us in 2004 and I have only just gotten around to trying it. I have lots of recipes like this!

One of my habits is that when I ‘damage’ something intentionally I name it. So I throw cardboard boxes in the compactor at work and name them, then squash them. I chop up the used gift cards at work and name them. Well this recipe let me name lots of different people and things as I bashed malt biscuits! I could have done it in the food processor, but I used my trusty rolling pin. I used a bit of force as I bashed through three plastic bags! So I put them in a bowl and kept bashing. So yes, beware if ever you get on my wrong side!

The rest is super easy! Melt butter, choc mint chocolate and a tin of condensed milk together. Condensed milk= instant win!

Finally you mix it together

Spread it into a tin and top with melted chocolate:

After half an hour or so in the fridge you can cut it.

I think everyone who had a taste at work came back for seconds. Lots of nice comments too!

Oh and here is the recipe! Thanks again Myf! And make sure you don’t wait 4 years to try this!

Choc Mint Slice

2 packets 250g malt biscuits
185g butter
1 x 400g tin condensed milk
1 x 250g block peppermint chocolate
185g dark chocolate drops

Melt together the condensed milk, butter and peppermint chocolate over low heat until combined. To crush biscuits, place them in a bag and crush with a rolling pin. Add crushed biscuits to chocolate mixture. Line a large slice tin with gladwarp and press mixture into tin. Melt chocolate drops in the microwave for 1 minute and spread over the top. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before slicing into small squares.

And it must be wholesome as the biscuit packet advertises this nutritional gem:

This is floating in my head, so it might as well be floating in yours as you read on…

My family has always had weird names for some foods. Growing up, ice-cream was always ‘ICDC’ and tomato sauce the very Australian ‘Dead ‘Orse.’ My kids have developed their own food-isms- bean sprouts are known as ‘has beens.’

During the week, I saw someone at work eating caramel slice- you know the one, biscuit base, condensed milk caramel in the middle and chocolate on top. I have been thinking of it ever since and as I got into a cooking mode today decided to bake it.

Now the recipe I used is from Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess. It is called ‘Roxanne’s Millionaire’s Shortbread.’ Now we always called it Caramel Slice when I was growing up, but after sampling it just now, I can see the millionaire bit comes from the richness! Immy said that it will last at least a week in the fridge. I suspect I will be freezing some. Now that is not to say it is not divine, for it is, but the tiniest of squares is enough really to round off a pleasant meal, or serve with a cup of tea,

The novel thing about this recipe is that the caramel filling is cooked in the microwave. I cooked it as Immy was watching a programme on microwaves being unsafe and leaking all sorts of nasties. Meh! They did say if there was something in there it was fine.

So the recipe:

Roxanne’s Millionaire’s Shortbread

This is the recipe, given to me by a fellow-mother at my daughter’s school, that introduced me to the notion of melting chocolate in the microwave. I am now a complete convert: it is truly the best way to do it. And you make the caramel in the microwave, too, so that what would normally take a good couple of hours takes only a few minutes. Another revelation. It’s not that I never used a microwave before, but I hadn’t ever realized it could do things better as opposed to just faster.

You can make this a good week in advance if you’d like. Keep the shortbread in a cold place or in an airtight tin, and it’ll be fine. Or you can even freeze it for up to 6 months. If frozen, the squares should be allowed to defrost for 3-4 hours at room temperature.

225g plain flour
75g caster sugar
375g unsalted butter
397g can sweetened condensed milk
4 tablespoons golden syrup
325g plain chocolate

1 x 23 cm square brownie tin or similar, greased and the bottom lined

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsuis/gas mark 3.

Put the flour and sugar into a bowl and rub in 175g of the butter, clumping the dough together to form a ball. Press this sandy shortbread mixture into the tin and smooth it either with you hands or a spatula. Prick it with a fork and cook for 5 minutes, then lower the oven to 150 degrees Celsius/gas mark 2, and cook it for a further 30-40 minutes until it is pale golden and no longer doughy. Let it cool in the tin.

Melt the remaining 200g of butter in the microwave (in a large microwavable bowl) for 2-3 minutes, then add the condensed milk and golden syrup. Whisk the mixture well until the butter is thoroughly incorporated. Heat for 6-7 minutes until it is boiling, stirring thoroughly every minute. As a microwave novice, I found this bit difficult and had to watch that I didn’t burn the toffee mixture (I did once), which is why I caution you to check and stir every minute. It’s ready when it’s thickened and turned a light golden brown. Pour this molten toffee evenly over the cooled shortbread and leave it to set.

Break the chocolate into pieces and melt it in a bowl in a microwave. Pour and spread evenly over the fudge mixture (the less you touch it, the shinier it will be) and leave it to cool. Once set, cut the caramel shortbread into pieces. The squares can be stored in the fridge to keep them firm, though if it’s winter that shouldn’t be necessary.

Makes about 24. (Well I’ve cut 30 and will be cutting each of those in half in future!)

And the finished product:

Yes, it hadn’t quite set, but hey, I’m blaming the heat up here (have I mentioned how cold it is lately?) but oh my! I keep referring to it as Call Girl Slice in my head, but don’t fancy explaining that to the kids!