Di-licious

This is my go to recipe whenever I get asked to bring a dessert but I'm pressed for time. The basic brownie mix is so easy to whip up and can be as posh or simple as you want them to be.  Dress them up with perfect raspberries, a drizzle of chocolate glaze or ganache or a sprinkle of cocoa powder. Or better still, simply dust them with icing sugar. Serve them up as dessert canapé at a posh soirée. Bring them along to a morning tea or take it to your friend’s house for dessert next time you get invited for dinner. It's also a great beginner's recipe for young learning cooks. The first time I cooked them I was disappointed because they looked so flat in the pan.  “They’re too small!” I wailed to Mr Di-licious. That was until I picked up my little round cutter, cut one out and tasted it – absolute perfection! And then there is the matter of the little cook’s treat you’re left with after cutting out the brownies – brownie corners! Pop t...

I like to think myself as being an organised person. I keep bags of chopped-up ripe bananas in the freezer, ready to make banana bread and muffins on a whim. I love this banana bread because it's the real deal - not banana cake masquerading as banana bread. It holds its shape when sliced, toasts well and I strongly suspect it will be amazing pan fried in a little butter for a decadent Sunday breakfast….. RECIPE: Perfect Banana Bread A simple and easy banana bread that should be in everyone’s recipe repertoire. Adapted from Margaret Fulton’s recipe in “Margaret Fulton’s Encyclopedia of Food & Cookery” Ingredients 3 ripe bananas, mashed 2 eggs, beaten well 1 cup wholemeal flour 1 cup plain flour ¾ cup sugar 1 tsp salt 1 tsp bicarbonate soda ½ cup coarsely chopped walnuts (omit if you have allergy concerns) Instructions Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line base of a medium loaf pan (21 x 11cm). In a large bowl, mix the bananas and eggs together. Sift ...

This year I started my own family Christmas tradition with Olive.  We made the fruit cake together.  She helped me stir the fruit every day for two weeks and stood next to me while I made up the cake batter. While the cakes baked we played Barbies and read stories. It was a very special time for us, one I hope we will continue to share each year. No doubt she'll still be stealing the glace cherries and macadamias out of the mixture when she's 21! I only made this cake for the first time last year.  I'm not a fruit cake fan myself but Mr Di-licious is.  His only Christmas wish last year was for a fruit cake. Not having a family recipe to turn to, I did the next best thing; I consulted the Australian Womens Weekly Test Kitchen (AWWTK). I know some purists out there will criticise me for this but I fiddled with the fruit.  I have enough stuff sitting in my pantry without having half open bags of glace apricots and pineapple.  I just use...

This week I’m going to make a bold suggestion.  Instead of queuing up at the shops, why not give a home-baked gift instead? Every year I pull my hair out, trying to work out what to give family and friends.  I walk aimlessly around monolithic shopping centres and to what end? I walk out dejected and despondent – unable to find just the right gift.  A couple of years ago when we were all feeling budget-challenged, my girlfriends and I resolved to make our Kris Kringle gifts instead of buying them. It was fantastic. It required thought and effort. That year I gave a jar of my first, backyard plum-tree jam. I received a beautiful Christmas angel painting that takes pride of place in my living room each year. When you make a gift you give something of yourself.  A beautifully presented box of di-licious home-baked biscuits could make you THE must have Secret Santa of the season. These shortbread-style biscuits look like a slice of Christmas...

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Drive to Byron Bay for my sister's wedding so we could transport the wedding cake I'd made her. A six day break where we spent four days in the car. Insane right? Did I mention I made a wedding cake? Not your quintessential tiered, fondant creation mind you.  In a nod to our Norwegian heritage, my sister asked me to make a traditional wedding cake called kransekake. If you haven’t seen one before, kransekake isn’t actually a cake; it’s a tower of eighteen sweet almond macaroon rings – think baked marzipan – ‘glued’ together with royal icing.  Instead of cutting the cake, the bride and groom lift the top ring.  The number of rings that stay attached to the top ring is supposed to signify how many children the happy couple will be blessed with.  The rings are then broken up into pieces (starting from the bottom) and served with coffee.  The dough is a cinch to make but its the baking that brin...

A few weeks ago I was given a wonderful gift - a bowl full of freshly picked backyard apples, via my sister-in-law Kaz.  We're not sure what variety there were, heirloom perhaps? But they were crisp and sweet and I thought they'd be perfect for baking. They sat pretty in a bowl for a week or so, filling the dining room with their gorgeous apple scent while I decided what to bake. An apple pie was inevitable but I really wanted to make some little cakes too.  I consulted my bookshelf and put on my thinking cap and voilà; gorgeous mini apple-almond cakes. The almond meal made the cakes quite dense - almost a hybrid of a slice and cake, and kept the cake di-liciously moist.  The glaze of apricot jam and sugar syrup was a master stroke! And the thin fan of apple slices just look so darn pretty.  Great job I thought! I made copious hand written notes and snapped away ready for a future blog post.  Then I did a quick pack up of the house before Mr...

I love getting feedback from Di-licious Cupcakes readers.  Every time a new comment comes in I feel a surge of  cake love spreading across the blogishpere.  It seems I'm not the only one who thinks that life is too short to eat bad cake! And the cake love isn't just limited to the blog site.   Di-licious Cupcakes is also on Facebook and Twitter for the more socially connected reader (although I confess I still struggle with Twitter.....)  Following is as easy as clicking on the pretty icons at the top right hand side of the blog, just under the banner. And this weekend, my embryonic social networking adventures have struck gold - two fans (friends) wrote to tell me about their success with recipes featured on Di-licious Cupcakes !  Woo hoo! "Thanks Di ... I tried your chocolate macaron recipe and it worked brilliantly! My family didn't stop raving about them! ..."    Katie, via Facebook " I was up at 8am this morning, mak...

Making one cake for the man you love is hard. Try making three to celebrate his 40th birthday! Unlike a normal cake order where the client specifies the flavour, shape, filling and decoration, Mr Di-licious simply said “Surprise me”. Humph....I think that’s worse. One cake down and the next needed in only a few days, inspiration finally struck one morning in the shower – make him an Earl Grey tea flavoured cake. Brilliant! My first scan of the web found lots of tea cakes but they were more church picnic than milestone birthday. It’s a celebration cake and in my world that means a creamy filling and chocolate. Chocolate and Earl Grey?  Suspend belief and take it from me: it works mate... it does! Time was short so instead of experimenting, I let my eyes do the walking through Google Images to find a recipe I could use. I was instantly smitten by a cake by Cultivate Online : The Queen’s Earl Grey Fudge Cake - a chocolate and earl grey tea cake, filled with earl grey fl...

Tomorrow afternoon we’re loading up the car to head to Ballarat for the weekend. Before then I have to: Make a cake (first time recipe) Make cake filling Make ganache Make praline Make sticky date puddings Make butterscotch sauce Pick up drycleaning Grab last minute baking groceries Pack a cake decorating tool kit Pack for me and Olive Pack for the dog Pick up birthday gift for sister in law Do kinder drop off and pick up Go to playgroup Use up the mince in the fridge Enter the competition to win a personalised apron for Olive So what did I do last night? Procastinated with a capital P: Vacuumed the house Cleaned the oven Cleaned the scuff marks off the half wall in the kitchen Cleaned the back door windows Reduced my email inbox from 11 pages to 2 pages (I must learn to delete as I go!) Drafted and redrafted this post Finally decided on what cake recipe to make Wrote out the recipe in shorthand and last minute shopping list Went to bed after midnight! And...

Hands up if you've ever baked a cake that’s come out of the oven with a Rubenesque dome on top.  (Come on, don't be shy - we're all friends here.) Normally a dome is the quaint hallmark of a homemade cake - and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if your baking agenda is to cover a cake in fondant or create multiple layers then you need a cake that is flat on top. One way to achieve this is to [simply] level off your cake. Use a serrated knife and a steady eye to lop off the offending hump, or if you like baking toys [guilty, your Honour], grab yourself a cake leveller. (Cake off cuts can easily be frozen for later use in trifle or cake pops.) But if you want to bake a perfectly flat cake from the outset, you really should think about stripping. Cake strips are essentially strips of padded fabric coated in aluminium. You soak them in water, wring them out and then wrap them around your cake tin before baking. I’ve read about cake strips on a few foru...

It's Norway's national holiday today - hurrah! Whilst my Norwegian family were getting ready to head out to see the annual parade, back here in suburban Melbourne I held my own special celebration, dressing up Olive and baking a traditional treat. See this picture - that's me and my sister outside our old home in Sandefjord, on our way to the parade. I think I was 2.  The dress I'm wearing is called a bunad .   Based on traditional folk costumes, every region of Norway has their own special colours,  embrodiery and accessories. Fast forward 35 years and here's my daughter wearing that very dress and hat (and waving the same flag, albeit not quite so new looking now).  I love that my mum has preserved these touchstones of our culture. This year my parents are actually in Norway for my cousin's wedding and timed their arrival to be there for today's festivities. Rather than miltary parades, school children march through the t...

I just love spring.  Days begin to feel warmer, new growth appears in the garden (where my one year old pup hasn't already demolished the plants) and if you're in Melbourne, it has rained, and rained, and rained. My daughter Olive has loved it - lots of muddy puddles to jump in.  Clearly its time to whip up a bunch of mudcakes! Mud cakes are the modern wedding cake decorator's salvation.  They can be baked a couple of days in advance, allowing plenty of time for elaborate decoration.  Mud cakes tolerate fridge and freezer storage and being particularly dense, can be reliably stacked on top of one another or carved into fun shapes like teapots. Mudcakes are also ridiculously easy to make - melt and mix. Gently heat your chocolate, butter and milk together and allow to cool.  Whisk up your eggs and combine with the cooled chocolate mix and then pour into sifted dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly, pour into cupcake papers and...