Roasted Tomato and Capsicum Soup

Ingredients

1 kg ripe tomatoes

1 large red capsicum

1 large onion – brown or Spanish

1 long red chilli (optional)

2 tbs olive oil

¼ head of fresh garlic

Salt and pepper

½ cup liquid stock – chicken or vegetable

 

Method

1.      Preheat oven to 200°C.

2.      Slice tomatoes in half

3.      Halve and deseed capsicum and chilli

4.      Separate garlic into individual cloves. Do not peel

5.      Halve onion and removed root end

6.      Toss tomatoes, capsicum, chilli, onion and garlic in oil, salt and pepper

7.      Lay vegetables skin side up in a baking dish with at least 3cm sides

8.      Place in the oven for 45mins or until skins are blistered and flesh is soft.

9.      Remove from the oven and set aside until cool enough to handle

10.   Remove the skins from all vegetable and discard. Squeeze garlic out of its skin

11.   Place flesh and any liquid in the tray into a large saucepan and blend with a stick blender until smooth

12.   Add stock and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

·        Serve piping hot with parmesan crisps, cheese toasty or garlic bread

Lasagne

Ingredients

MEAT SAUCE

1kg 3 star beef mince

Olive oil

500g tomato paste

500g can diced tomatoes

1 large brown onion, diced

1 medium carrot, finely grated

1 large red capsicum

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 tablespoons Italian mixed herbs (Basil, oregano, marjoram, parsley, rosemary,

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

1cup beef stock (either fresh stock, liquid UHT stock or stock powder/cube and water)

Salt and pepper

 

WHITE SAUCE

½ cup plain flour

½ cup salted butter

2 cups milk

1 cup grated tasty cheese

¼ cup grated parmesan cheese

Black pepper, to taste

Ground Nutmeg, to taste

 

ASSEMBLY

1 cup grated tasty cheese

¼ cup grated parmesan cheese

6-8 Fresh lasagne sheets

Olive oil spray

¼ tsp ground sweet paprika

 

Method

MEAT SAUCE

1.      Line a baking tray with alfoil. Preheat an oven with overhead grill element at 200°

2.      Remove the core, seeds and white veins from the capsicum and cut in half

3.      Place, skin side up, on the foil tray and place under the grill

·        We are looking for the skin to blacken and blister. Keep an eye on this as you are progressing through the rest of the recipe. I can’t really give you a time for this to happen as it depends on how thick the capsicum flesh is, how moist, how close to the overhead element you can get the flesh. When the blackened blisters cover the skin, take the tray out of the oven, use the sheet of foil to wrap around the capsicum. Crimp the edges of the foil together to form a parcel. Wrap the parcel with a damp cloth – a tea towel is perfect here – and set aside. When the capsicum is cool enough to handle, unwrap from the parcel, peel off the skin. Pulse the flesh in a blender or food processer until pureed.

4.      Heat olive oil in a very large, deep fry pan, over medium-high heat

5.      Add onion and carrot. Sauté until soft and has little brown bits on the edges. Add garlic and cook for an additional minute

6.      Add beef. Break it down into smaller bits and stir until evenly brown.

7.      Add tomato paste and stir well to combine. Cook over high heat 3-4 minutes.

8.      Add herbs, vinegar, salt and pepper

9.      Add tomatoes.

10.   Add stock and stir well to combine. TIP: Pour the stock into the empty tomato tin and tomato paste jar to get every little bit of tomatoey goodness, before adding to the pan

11.   Simmer uncovered on low heat while you prepare the rest of the components

12.   Add the capsicum puree and stir to combine

 

WHITE SAUCE

1.      Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat

2.      Add the flour and whisk well for 2-3 minutes (or until a toasted smell is achieved), forming a blonde roux

3.      While whisking constantly, gradually stream in the milk. Whisk until the mixture thickens

4.      Remove from heat and stir in the cheeses, pepper and nutmeg. Mix well to combine

5.      Set aside

 

ASSEMBLY

1.      Spray a very large baking dish with a light coating of oil

2.      Spread 2 tablespoons of white sauce on the base of the dish

3.      Add a layer of pasta sheets

4.      Add a 1cm layer of meat sauce

5.      Add a thin layer of white sauce

6.      Repeat steps 3-5 until the dish is full to 1cm below the rim

7.      Top with the remaining white sauce, grated cheese, then paprika

8.      Bake 20-30mins or until cheese is melted and light brown

9.      Allow to cool for 10mins before serving

Kaylee's Fox birthday cake

August 2018 - Kaylee requested a fox birthday cake. I cheated and used a boxed chocolate cake mix in a heart shaped cake tin. I cut the cake into 2 layers, leveled the top and filled the cake with chocolate frosting from the packet. I put a small amount of frosting around the sides and on top as a crumb coat.

I kneaded some premade white fondant with red and brown gel food colour to make the fox fur colour. I used the cake tin as a template to cut out the shape and added some white fondant for the cheeks. I mixed some black food colour gel into some more fondant and shaped a nose, eyes and ears (also pictured - unicorn ears and eyes, a spare fox nose and different sized fox eyes).

  I decided to add a small fox-red heart to the cheek and small balls of white fondant to highlight the eyes a little better.

Here is the completed cake. The birthday girl loved it!

Audrey's Rainbow Unicorn Cake

August 2018 -  Audrey requested a unicorn birthday cake. I complied, to the best of my ability.
First step was to prepare the cakes. I'll be honest - I cheated and used packet vanilla cake mix and did the "melted butter and extra egg" trick to make it taste better. 2 packets of greens vanilla butter cake mix, divided into 3 bowls, then coloured with Americolor gel food dye - in hot pink, electric purple and teal. I added each colour in blobs to 3 identical prepared cake tins.

After the cakes were baked, I trimmed and leveled the tops of the cakes, saving the cake scraps. I layered the the cakes with basic white buttercream frosting - butter, icing sugar and a little of this for flavour:

Don't ask me what a unicorn's dream tastes like. I still don't know. I made a MOUNTAIN of frosting - enough for between the 3 cake layers, a crumb coat over the whole cake and enough left over to make cake pop mix.

I added the extra frosting to the cake scraps from earlier and crammed the pastel cakey monstrosity into a waffle cone. I covered the cone in store-bought white fondant and decorated it with food colouring to form a unicorn horn, painting on a mix of gel food colour and a little water to form a "paint" consistency. If I do this again, I'll use vodka, as the water paint made the fondant soften, get sticky and make it very tricky to handle.

Do you know how difficult it is to make a unicorn horn that doesn't look like a phallus?! I do!

Ok - moving on. After refrigerating the cake to firm up the buttercream crumb coat, I rolled out some more white fondant to cover the whole cake

I coloured a small amount of fondant with pink and formed some pointy ears around a bamboo skewer, to help with assembly. I also coloured some fondant with black gel colour to form eyes/lashes for the unicorn face.I left the decorations to air dry until firm.

Once everything was dry and firm, I assembled the cake - the horn was attached using 2 bamboo skewers inserted into the cake pop mixture. The ears were attached using skewers and the eyes were attached with a tiny bit of water, applied with a fine paintbrush to make the fondant tacky. I decorated the bottom edge of the cake with artisinal marshmallows, from a local supplier, alternating pale pink and white. Here is the finished cake

Spiced Peach Pudding

Ingredients

Oil spray, for greasing
75g caster sugar
75g butter, softened2 small eggs

50g Self-raising flour

25g Almond meal

3 fresh peaces. peeled, stoned and halved

1 tbs demerara or coconut sugar
1½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp vanilla extract

Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, to serve

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190°C. Lightly grease 23cm round oven proof dish
2. Beat butter and caster sugar together in a large mixing bowl until pale.
3. Beat in vanilla and eggs, one at a time, until light and fluffy
4. Fold in the flour almond meal and 1tsp of cinnamon
5. Spoon mixture into prepared dish
6. Arrange the peach halved, curved side up, over the top. Press them gently into the pudding batter to submerge about half a cm of the fruit
7. Mix together the remaining cinnamon and the demerara sugar. Sprinkle evenly over the fruit and pudding mix
8. Bake for 30 mins or until golden and well risen.
9. Serve warm with cream or ice cream.

Variation:

Substitute peaches for other fruit of your choice - Mixed berries, nectarines, apricots, apple cut into eighths and fanned pear halves are great options. You can also vary the spices used - apricots or pears go fabulously with ginger, berries and apple pair well with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.