New Recipe #12: A Landslide

I haven’t baked in a while, so I thought I’d try a new recipe with Key Lime Pie. The recipe was fairly simple, a buttery biscuit base and then condensed milk, egg yolks and juice and rind of limes, and voilà a pie was made.

It tasted really tangy so I got the flavours spot on, and it looked good. However the next day I looked in the fridge to discover the topping was a bit of a landslide. I was going to take it into work, but I don’t think they would appreciate a near cooking disaster. Oh well more pie for me!

New Recipe #7 and New Activity #17: Ladies who brunch

My favourite thing to do is cook for friends. Whenever my uni friends came to stay, my favourite part was dancing in the kitchen to Stevie Wonder while making breakfast for them all.

During the Christmas break on lazy Sunday afternoons I would binge watch Jamie Oliver money saving meals programmes and note which recipes I wanted to try. One of the recipes was a great one for a brunch.  And then I had an idea that I could hold a brunch for my Saturday pole friends before class. I’d never made brunch before, and yesterday I held a brunch for Lucy, Teri and Harriette who go to pole class.

The timing worked out quite well as our class starts at 2pm, so having brunch at 11.30 was ideal. Brunch was in two parts, the first was a Giant veg Rösti from the Jamie Oliver money saving recipe book. It’s a really healthy dish, it has grated potatoes and carrots, peas, spinach and poached egg. The first course was a success as my friends had seconds and there was barely anything left on the tray after!

The second part of the course was a pudding board. I’d made this once before and last time it had 3 components which I think was too many, so I stuck with two this time and it worked. I loved the reaction of my friends, they saw me making the warm chocolate fromage frais, and then I started getting the lemon and orange mousse out of the fridge I made earlier in the morning and they were all very surprised. I finished off the board with some berries for decoration.

We’re quite a chatty bunch, but with both courses there was silence as the food absorbed us all! I loved making brunch and I can’t wait to host another brunch.

Because we were so busy eating and chatting (when the food was finished) I didn’t get a chance to get pictures of Teri, Lucy and Harriette enjoying the brunch. But I’m sure they’ll be round again for more.

New recipe #5 and New food #13: Festive food

Christmas is time for family, friends, fun and festive food. And so for the first time I tried Turkish Delight and thanks to my sister Lisa’s skills, she created a GIF of me trying it. See below!

I’ve been cooking a lot recently, thanks to binge watching Jamie Oliver’s Money Saving Meals and getting inspired to cook leftovers. So Christmas Day evening I cooked turkey soup and turkey and vegetable pie. Then on Boxing Day I cooked Baked chocolate and Clementine cheesecake.

It was a fairly straight forward recipe, although my mum did have to save the chocolate mixture as for the first time I over melted chocolate!

The baked cheesecake was a success and tasted of Christmas. And as you can see I unintentionally coordinated my outfit with the cheesecake.

Cooking #3: The pain of perfecting the panna cotta

Earlier this week I tried panna cotta for the first time, and having seen the dessert repeatedly on Austalian Masterchef I thought I should attempt making it.

It was the first time of using gelatine leaves, and as you can see I was pretty nervous about it. It seems so technical.

They set perfectly, but like what happened to Emelia on aussie masterchef, whose signature dish was panna cotta, they didn't come out of the ramekin. I was so disappointed!

Even though I was disappointed, they did taste pretty great, and I made nice raspberry sauce to go with them. I think it’s a major dessert to master.

The contestants used metallic ramekins and a blow torch to help the panna cotta's get out; maybe I should put them on my Christmas list!

Cooking #1: It doesn’t always go right

Thanks to a macaroon master class at the start of the year; making macaroons aren't a daunting thing. I've made them for my friend Paula’s hen do earlier this year, and today I made them for my friend Linsey’s birthday. Well belated birthday present, her birthday was in May and I gave her a ‘Joss’s birthday bakery voucher’, where she could pick from a list of things I could bake. So five months later she got some macaroons. Not just any macaroons but a new Malteaser macaroon recipe.

Although I know how to make macaroons, I've noticed macaroon recipes vary quite a lot, and it seems recipes I find online don’t always go my way. It’s probably me not being a great cook, but today they didn't go quite right. It can be a number of things that can go wrong; the mixture has been folded too much, the egg whites were too firm, or the oven was too hot or they were in for too long. For today’s batch the shells broke and there wasn't a good enough skin, if that’s the right baking term.

However I did manage to salvage a few for Linsey, so she got her birthday present in the end. She looks quite happy with them.

The recipe I tried is from the Little Loaf site where there are lots more yummy treats. And for me, onwards and upwards for the next new thing to cook!