Christmas Coconut and White Chocolate Wreath

I saw this adorable recipe on  http://almostbourdain.blogspot.com/2009/11/christmas-recipe-coconut-christmas.html and thought it was a quick and easily recipe for me to make for morning tea at work. We were having Kris Kringle and morning tea to celebrate Christmas. It also looks like the perfect Christmas tree decoration. The only issue would be the summer heat warming up the white chocolate and causing it to crack and fall apart. I was thinking of making a milk chocolate equivalent but I decided to pass that by and that may be something for me to make for the next Christmas. 

Also what kid could resist this.

Here is how the wreathes came to fruition. 

The Ingredients

180 grams of melted white chocolate

95 grams shredded coconut

Cachous

The method

Line baking trays or plates with baking paper and set aside.

Melt the white chocolate over the stove using a saucepan of water and a bowl that contains the white chocolate. The bowl is sitting in the saucepan. Mix the white chocolate white it melts until you achieve a smooth consistency.

When the chocolate is completely melted remove it from the stove. Add the shredded coconut and mix until they are all combined. 

Take approximately a tablespoon of the mixture (I may have take 2 tablespoons) and roll it into a ball. Place it onto the baking paper. Then with whatever you may have at hand (I used a metal spoon) insert it into the center of the ball and move it around to create the hole, in order to achieve the wreath shape.

I sprinkled more shredded coconut onto the wreaths. Then I gently and individually placed the cachous onto each wreath. 

Refrigerate the wreaths until set, I did this over night. Remove them from the fridge and then tie the ribbon on each wreath. And here is the finished product.

I didn't make enough to leave any for my family but I wanted to make them some when I came back from work. The only issues was that they managed to consume almost completely a 200 gram block of white chocolate that I left in the fridge that day.

Chorizo pilaf

Here is a dish with chorizo and rice and a bit of other things. I got this recipe from taste.com.au and just modified the recipe by adding capsicum.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons of olive oil

6 chorizo sausages, sliced

2 brown onions, halved and thinly sliced

2 teaspoons paprika

2 red capsicums

1 tablespoons ground cumin

2 cups basmati rice

4 cups of chicken stock

1/2 cup of flat leaf parsley leaves, chopped

The method

Heat some oil in a pan over medium heat. Cook the chorizo for 2 to 3 minutes on each side until golden, Remove and drain the chorizo on paper towels.

Then in the pan, that still contains chorizo oil, add onion and allow to cook for 2 minutes. Add garlic, chilli, paprika and cumin and cook until the onions soften.

Stir in the rice and add the chicken stock and chorizo. Bring the stock to the boil and then reduce the stove to medium. Simmer for 10 minutes until the rice softens.

Remove from the stove and allow to stand for 5 minutes. Stir through the parsley and its ready to serve. Mind you, I may have forgotten add the parsley. Not too sure how I do that as the recipe is right in front of me while cooking. Pregnancy brain, nappy brain, nope. Then what else.

Christmas Macarons

Christmas is here once again and once again I felt motivated to cook something and something also for Christmas. I again turned to the macaron, to give it a Christmas feel. With my cooking ability and creative license limited I decided to search for recipes to take a slightly different approach. I was to add lemon rind in the making of the macaron shell, but actually forgot to add it. So the macaron shell is made in the same way as the ones I have made previously.  I even tried to sprinkle some coconut over the uncooked shells but that did not work out as I did not cook them completely in the oven and took them out too early. So they broke as I tried to remove them from the baking paper. Taking then out too early was motivated by paranoia about the macarons turning brown and so I took them out when the started rising in the oven. Make chocolate ones I say. So here are macarons that were made successfully.

The ingredients

The shell

3 egg whites aged

60 grams caster sugar

195grams icing sugar, sifted

120grams ground almonds, sifted

1 tablespoon of lemon rind, finely grated

Green food colouring

Raspberry Cream

60 ml thicken cream

150 grams white chocolate, coarsely chopped

45 grams defrosted raspberries, crushed

The method

Preheat a fan forced over to 130 degree Celsius. Line two trays with baking paper.

Beat the egg whites with an electric mixture until they turn white and form soft peaks. Gradually add the caster sugar until it becomes thick and glossy. It generally has a sheen to it. Add the green food colouring.

Egg whites

Egg whites and caster sugar, with green food colouring

Add one half of the sifted icing sugar and almond meal mixture to the egg whites and fold gently. This is the time to add the lemon rind.Fold the mixture until it has a smooth ribbon like consistency.

Smooth ribbon like consistency

 

 

 

 Fill a piping bag with a 1 cm wide nozzle and pipe it onto the baking trays. Allow to stand for 30 minutes until the mounds form a crust.

Place the trays into the oven and bake for about 12 to 15 minutes. When completed remove from the oven and allow to cool.

 

While the shells are baking away you can make the raspberry cream.

In a saucepan bring the cream to the boil and remove from heat. 

Thicken cream on the stove

Add the white chocolate and mix until smooth. 

Allow to cool and then add the crushed raspberries.

Crushed raspberries

Raspberry cream

Now I found this cream to be slightly runny, even when leaving in the fridge over night. I would probably increase the white chocolate content or reduce the cream or raspberry content.You can see the runny raspberry cream in the finished product.

Then sandwich two shells together but using the raspberry cream. Your Christmas colour macarons are complete.

Look they are not brown

Cake with Ice Cream

I decided it was time for a dessert recipe, something sweet for a change. I did attempt to bake a cake on another weekend but due to my impatience the cake was ruined when I tried to take it out of its cake tin. Maybe not ruined just deformed. It broke in half, part of it was on the plate and the other part still in the cake tin. That did not deter me, I picked out the bits that were still in the cake tin, layered the cake bits onto the part of the cake that was already out of the tin. I still covered it with butter icing, though as the cake was warm the icing melted as I smoothed it on. Moral of the story, if the cake is warm then leave it alone. Mind you I know that but it is the impatience in me that just wants the whole cooking bit to be over. Another moral, even if your cake has broken apart and the icing has melted, it still tastes good. It just doesn't look promising.

I saw an ice cream cake recipe on a blog I follow http://www.chocolatesuze.com/ and I thought, now that looks good. I changed the recipe slightly, just in regards to the flavoring. I decided to make a coffee mocha and dark chocolate ice cream cake and here is how. Coffee because I am trying to stop drinking coffee and I do get the occasional craving for it. Dark chocolate because I think it goes rather well with coffee.

The ingredients

1 packet of vanilla cake mix

3 eggs

1 cups of water

500 ml of coffee mocha ice cream

A handful of roughly chopped dark chocolate

The method

In a bowl, add the cake mixture, eggs and ice cream. Leave to stand to let the ice cream go all soft. I sped up this melting process by added the water. I processed the mixture with a electric beater for a number of minutes.

Chop up the dark chocolate into rough pieces. The ultimate aim with the dark chocolate was to have chocolate chunks through out the cake. That was wishful thinking. Chocolate will melt at high temperatures. I later discovered that the chocolate would create another effect. Now add the dark chocolate chunks to the cake mixture.

A dark chocolate waste land ohhhhhh

Pour the cake mixture into a cake tin and place it in the oven at 160 degree Celsius. Now I thought that this baking process would have taken around 50 minutes but it did not. After an hour of baking the cake was visibly still runny. At one and a half hours I was sure I had failed. I almost pulled it out of the oven at that point but I thought that just to hang in there for a tad bit longer. At 2 hours, it was finally ready and I let it cool over night. 

 The following morning I removed it from the cake tin, well sort of, the dark chocolate had melted and had dropped to the bottom to create a crunchy layer. I could not remove it from the bottom of the tin and the chocolate had stuck to it. So I took photos of the cake with the cake tin's bottom. So here is the finished product, my dark chocolate and coffee mocha ice cream cake, love the combination.

Wholemeal Roti Paratha

My husbands' buddy had just recently introduced us to store bought wholemeal roti parathas. Frozen wholemeal roti, where each roti is separate from each other by a film of plastic and kept in your freezer. The are 30 rotis in each packet and they are very easy to cook, so easy my kids can prepare them. Plus they are a great time saver if you want freshly unfrozen rotis.

Rather than kneading dough, which for me, an inexperience roti maker, could take me up to an hour to prepare it.  I would also be left with sore knuckles and arms. So if you want a curry with roti all you have to do is follow these few easy steps.

Go to your local Indian spice shop and buy Katoomba brand whole meal roti parathas. They will be located in the freezer section in the shop.

Here is how one looks

Now just remove the plastic and place it on a pan.

Cook the roti on both sides and if you want to coat both sides with butter. Otherwise they are fine without butter. Yes the butter in the picture below is definitely excessive and was quickly removed after my son placed it there.

Remove it from the pan and there you have one prefect roti ready to eat. My husband, who has an Indian background, this takes him back to when he was a kid and his mother prepared rotis. My kids adore them too and often request to have one for their dinner on a weekend.

Chicken Laska

Chicken laska is a absolute favorite with my daughter and I love it too. I love the spiciness that comes with the chillies, and adding more chili gives it a greater omf factor that is too my liking. The coconut milk soothes the tastes buds and the rice noodles, coriander, chicken all compliment each other.

Here is the recipe for the the chicken laska I made.

The ingredients

200 grams of dried noodles (I used rice noodles)

2 red chillies

4 garlic cloves

5cm of ginger chopped roughly

1 teaspoon ground coriander

Half a cup of coriander leaves

50 ml of sesame oil

3 chicken breasts

1 liter of coconut milk

3 cups of chicken stock

50 ml fish sauce

The juice of one lime

I also used a tablespoon of laksa paste, even though in this recipe, you actually make your own.

To serve

Bean sprout

Coriander leaves

The method

Soak the noodles in boiled water for about 5 minutes and then drain. I used rice noodles.

Rice noodles in boiled water

I pan fried the chicken breasts, without any seasoning until cooked.Then the chicken was cut thinly into strips and set aside.

As you can probably see that I did not actually use chicken breasts but rather thigh fillets. I had then in the freezer and preferred to cook with something I already had.

Place the chillies, garlic, ginger, coriander seeds, fresh coriander and sesame oil into a food processor and blend until a paste is formed. I used the blender as I prefer the smoother texture that it gives compared to the the food processor.

The vortex of laska paste

Laska paste

Now with the laska paste that was made in the previous step, pan fry it for about one minute while stirring. It is at this point that I added about a spoonful of the store bought laksa paste.

Add the coconut milk and chicken stock and bring to the boil. Then allow it to simmer for 10 minutes.

Add the fish sauce and cut chicken and cook it for a further 5 minutes. Then add the lime juice.

Place the noodles in a bowl, pour the soup over and top it off with bean shoots and coriander.

The result, a content daughter who is a avid laksa lover, who also does not mind a touch of chili. 

The Baby Shower

The baby shower for my sister came and went. There were a few games, plenty of talking and plenty of food. My macarons, an improved version of them made a show. Though I still can't seem to avoid a slight browning of the shells. I tried it with lower heat, they were too soft and the shells ended breaking apart. I guess with a lot more practice I will hopefully master the macaron. 

There were plenty of yummy wraps, sandwiches and desserts. Here are a few pictures of the food (the majority was prepared by my sister and her husband) that was enough to feed a whole army.

Lots of highly concentrated sugar goodies

Mind the used plates, I should have taken a shot way earlier before the food was disturbed

My macarons, again slightly browned