Month: October 2021

Banana Bread Brownies

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup self-raising flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter
  • 1 1/2 cups white sugar
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/2 cup cocoa powder
  • 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
  • 1 cup about 2 large ripe bananas, mashed

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.
  2. Line or grease an 20cm x 20cm baking pan.
  3. Stir the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl.
  4. In a medium sauce pot over medium heat, melt butter. Continue to cook while it foams and stir constantly until it browns and you see some brown specks at the bottom and it starts to smell a bit toasted. Remove from heat.
  5. Once butter cools a bit, add sugar and vanilla extract.
  6. Next, beat in the eggs one at a time with a spoon.
  7. Gradually add the flour mixture, and stir the batter until it’s evenly moistened.
  8. Divide the batter in half to two separate bowls.
  9. Into one bowl of batter, blend the cocoa powder and chocolate chips. This mixture will be very thick.
  10. In the second bowl of batter, stir in the mashed banana.
  11. Spread 1/2 of the chocolate batter into the bottom of the prepared baking pan, and follow with all of the banana batter. For the remaining chocolate batter, you can either spoon it on top or you can put it in a plastic bag, snip off the corner, and squeeze it onto the banana batter in lines.
  12. Use a butter knife or a spatula to swirl the two batters together to create a marbled appearance.
  13. Bake in the preheated oven until the brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes
  14. Cool in the pan, cut into squares, and serve.

Junior Cook – Pizza

Pizza Base

  • 2 Cups self raising flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 30g butter
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • ΒΌ cup tomato sauce

Topping

  • 2 Cups grated cheese
  • 1 tomato thinly sliced
  • 1 cup well drained pineapple pieces
  • 1 cup finely chopped ham

Method

  1. Turn oven to 220 degrees (200 in fan forced oven). Get out a large oven tray
  2. Soft for and salt into a bowl. Chop up butter and add.
  3. With fingers, rub in butter until blended in
  4. Add milk (more of needed). Mix and knead to a soft dough.
  5. Roll out onto the baking tray (about 35cm diameter)
  6. Brush the dough with oil then tomato sauce
  7. Sprinkle cheese over then put tomato slices evenly over it.
  8. Spread pineapple and ham over evenly
  9. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until cooked.

Rhubarb crumble

Ingredients

  • 10 sticks of rhubarb
  • 4 tbsp water
  • 8 tbsp caster sugar
  • 1 tsp powdered ginger
  • 110g/4oz butter, softened
  • 110g/4oz demerara sugar
  • 180-200g/6-7oz flour
  • double cream (to serve)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
  2. Cut the rhubarb into 7.5cm/3in long sticks and place on an oven tray, sprinkle with the water and caster sugar and roast in the oven for 10 minutes.
  3. Once cooked, remove from the oven, sprinkle over the ginger and mix well.
  4. Fill an ovenproof dish about 4cm deep with the rhubarb.
  5. Rub the butter into the flour and sugar to make the crumble toppping. Sprinkle over the rhubarb and bake in the oven.
  6. Remove and allow to cool slightly before serving with double cream.

Bon-bons

Crazy easy to make. But take a bit of time to do the actual assembly.

Main ingredients

  • 30 blended digestives
  • 125g melted margarine
  • 4tbsp crushed walnuts
  • 6tbsp icing sugar
  • 5tbsp milk
  • 4tbsp cocoa

Optional ingredients

  • rum essence
  • orange zest
  • cinnammon

Method

  • Mix it all up!
  • Make balls about the size of a large grape – say half the diameter of a golf ball.
  • Roll the bon bons in dried coconut. Put in the fridge to harden.

Muffins Choc/Apple

Basic Ingredients

  • 1 3/4 cups self-raising flour
  • 6 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 2/3 cup caster sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 6 tbsp margarine/butter (melted)
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Put all in food-processor. Blitz until smooth.
Transfer the mixture to a normal mixing bowl

Add your choice of flavourings

Blueberry

  • 1 cup of fresh/frozen blueberries

Strawberry

  • 1 1/4 cups strawbs chopped into small pieces
  • 1 additional dessert spoon of flour

Choc chip

  • 150g choc chips
  • 12 small cubes of chocolate (1 in the centre of each muffin)

Apple

  • 1 1/2 cups of finely chopped cooking apples (probably about 1 large sized cooking apple)
  • Size of the apple pieces to be about 1cm x 2cm
  • 1 tea spoon of ground cinnamon

Method

  1. After mixing your flavourings, pour your mixture into individual muffin cases. It makes about 12 muffins.
  2. Put into the oven on 195 degrees on a fan oven.
  3. After 20 minutes, check how they’re doing. If you’ve got fruit in the muffins, you can’t test they’re cooked by using a skewer, so instead try prodding one of them with your finger: if they spring back when you push them, they’re cooked.

Penne Lasagne

Ingredients

  • 350g penne pasta
  • 250g minced beef
  • 440g tin of beans
  • 440g tin of chopped tomatoes
  • Onion
  • Grated carrot
  • Garlic
  • tomato concentrate
  • 200g grated cheese
  • 150g mozzarella cheese
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 egg, beaten

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Grease a biggish baking dish.
  2. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.
  3. In a large pan, brown the mince
  4. Remove the mince to a separate bowl and saute garlic and onion in the same pan.
  5. After garlic and onion has softened add grated carrot, beans, tomatoes, tomato concentrate. Cook for another 5 mins, add the cooked mince, then remove from heat
  6. In a bowl, combine cheddar, parmesan, and most of mozarella and beaten egg. Stir until well combined.
  7. In the prepared baking dish layer half the pasta, half the sauce and half the cheese mixture. Repeat. Top with remaining mozzarella.
  8. Bake in preheated oven 34 to 40 minutes, until hot and bubbly.

Thin Crispy Pizza Base

Source: https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/thin-crispy-pizza-bases/

INGREDIENTS

  • Olive oil, to grease
  • 250ml (1 cup) lukewarm water
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 2 teaspoons (7g/1 sachet) dried yeast
  • 450g (3 cups) plain flour, sifted
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 140g container pizza sauce, optional

METHOD

  • Step 1 Preheat oven to 220°C. Brush two 25cm pizza trays with oil to grease.
  • Step 2 Combine water and sugar in a small bowl. Sprinkle with the yeast and set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 5 minutes or until foaming.
  • Step 3 Meanwhile, sift flour and salt into a large bowl. Make a well in centre and add yeast mixture and oil. Use a wooden spoon to stir until combined, then use your hands to bring together. (It should be soft and slightly sticky.)
  • Step 4 Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 6 minutes or until almost smooth. Divide the dough in half and cover with a clean damp tea towel. Set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 5 minutes.
  • Step 5 Roll each dough portion out to line greased pizza trays. Spread bases with pizza sauce, if desired. Bake in preheated oven for 8 minutes or until golden and crisp. (To freeze pizza bases, see notes.)