Orange Soda and Kiwi Creamsicles

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM! Don't you just love that rhyme? Well sorry to disappoint, the post won't exactly be all about ice cream but close enough- creamsicles! I admit, it's probably the wrong time of the year to make all these chilled desserts since it's winter down here but hey, I like cold food anytime! It's true actually- I love a good glass of iced chocolate anyday over a cup of hot chocolate... And anyway, who can resist these pretty vibrant summery layered creamsicles? Thank you Stephanie from Desserts For Breakfast for sharing this lovely recipe with us! 

Unfortunately, I was being too much of a lazy bum to make the cream layer from scratch as Steph's done so I just concocted some of my own cream layer with some bought melted ice cream, milk and fruche and I had some passionfruit soda lying around in the fridge for my next project that I won't be needing much of so I decided to mix that in with the orange juice layer because from my experience, frozen orange juice really doesn't hold much flavour as opposed to their unfrozen kinds so I guess the soda helped subtly sweeten and add a bit of that crackle-in-the-mouth sensation. I must say, verrry subtly though, so I'll leave it up to you how much you guys want to put in, that is if you want to at all. 

Frozen Cherry and Choc Bits No-Bake Cheesecake

Even though it's dead freezing here in Australia (yes, 10 degrees is freezing for us here down under, don't mock us now), for some reason, I don't feel like hot apple pies or chocolate puddings, just craving chilled desserts. In fact, I'm actually getting horribly sick of chocolate so you won't see me using them anytime soon. The thought of chocolate chip cookies, chocolate truffles and fudgy wudgy brownies make me shudder. Maybe it's just a temporary thing, I'm sure the cravings will start to kick back some time soon... Anyway, after grazing through raspberri cupcakes blog for new inspiration, I stumbled across this most stunning cheesecake here and knew straight away I HAD to make them. I think the sudden attraction arose from the interesting log shape of the cheesecake, and plus, who doesn't like easy no bake cheesecakes that are PINK mind you....Recently I also noticed there were some fresh cherries on sale too at the local supermarket so I quickly bookmarked it and got around to making it yesterday. 

Best Ever Cinnamon Apple & Caramel Pull-Aparts

These pull aparts are a favourite in my family. They are a little fiddly but the result is oh so gooood! The texture resembles much of a scone but the caramel sauce on top of these more-ish goodies are what makes them stand on a whole new level! I'd even recommend doubling the recipe for the caramel sauce, because it's just thaaat good with them! They are definitely one of the few things I would always make again and again... it's a definite winner and keeper- thanks AWW Mix cookbook! Can't wait to try more recipes from the book!

Cinnamon Apple & Caramel Pull-Aparts(Serves 12)Recipe Adapted from the cookbook: The Australian Women's Weekly MIX 

Ingredients:

2 cups (300g) self-raising flour

30g butter

1 cup (250mL) milk, approximately

1/3 cup (65g) firmly packed brown sugar

400g can pie apples (or you could cook your own until just soft)

handful of sultanas (optional)

handful of chopped toasted pecans (optional)

pinch of ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon (or more) ground cinnamon

Extra chopped nuts for garnish

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200'C (180'C fan forced). Grease deep 22cm round cake pan
2. Mix in sugar, apples, sultanas, nuts and spices into a medium bowl and set aside
3. Sift flour into medium bowl, rub in butter with fingertips until no more big lumps
4. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture; add enough milk to mix to a soft, sticky dough. Knead dough on floured surface until smooth
5. Roll dough on floured baking paper to a 21cm x 40cm rectangle. Sprinkle dough with apple mixture to within 3cm from long edge. Roll from the long side and press to seal the edges (this might get a little messy as the juices from the apples would seep out, take some apples out if needed)
6. Use a floured, serrated knife to cut roll into 12 slices. Place 11 slices upright around edge of prepared pan; place remaining slice in the centre
7. Bake for about 25 minutes. Stand a few minutes before turning onto wire rack

For the caramel:

1/4 cup (60mL) cream

20g butter

1/2 cup (100g) firmly packed brown sugar

Stir ingredients in small saucepan constantly over heat without boiling until sugar is dissolved. Simmer, uncovered without stirring for about 3 minutes or until mixture is thickened slightly. Brush hot pull-apart evenly with caramel.  

Churros, Dogs, and Dumplings

Rose scented milk tea anyone? 

After seeing mowie's delicious  post on spanish churros, a friend and I decided to take on the challenge. I know it's probably easier for me to drive 5 minutes and just buy some at San Churros- nothing wrong with that at all, just that they're a tad expensive I must say, especially if you're an addict like me! Honestly, I would only go there if I had those entertainment vouchers that would get you complementary churros with another purchase. And I must say, of my 10 years of baking, I've never yet encountered a need to fry anything... Sure, there would be things like doughnuts and of course churros, waiting to be ticked from my to-do list, but up till now, I've managed to somehow avoid them. And plus, I've just come across a post here by raspberri cupcakes on how to make BAKED cinnamon doughnuts. It was a really exciting moment for me and now no more avoiding, it's jumped the queues and made it to the top of the top of my baking list. I really am a happy child now!

Raspberri Cupcake's Baked Doughnuts. Tempted anyone?

Anyway my friend- MK recently bought a dog, well recently as in 6 months and when I went over to her house 6 months ago, her dog was still a puppy. And I haven't told you about my fear of dogs, have I? Well ever since I was small, I was always terrified of dogs, big or small. People usually say it's probably because your family members also don't like them so they influenced you. True, my parents hate are scared of dogs, but I was never really sure to what extent they really influenced me, if you know what I mean.. So anyway, I somehow got over my fear that day and found Momo (the dog's name, it means peach in Japanese in case you were wondering) very cute indeed and I was even so brave to have let him lick my hand! Mind you that was 6 months ago. After those 6 months passed, I was invited to go see Momo again and I thought, hey, an opportunity to test out my gut again so I said sure, and why not make some churros while we're at it? We followed the recipe from this video here: 

Turns out, I forgot to bring the star tipped piping tip and she forgot hers at school (because she does food tech at school!) So we thought, well no big deal, we'll just pipe them with normal plain tips. Turned out to be quite a disaster, I would say 80% of them turned out looking like ugly, warty, black spotted, unevenly cooked churros. And yes we tried turning the heat lower and higher, cooking them one by one and timing them to see how long it would take to perfectly cook them but still none of ours were fully cooked inside! I blame the shape since normal churros with the rigged edges would help make it cook faster but maybe that's just my excuse for this failure. Another failure was making the chocolate dip to go with it. I had only brought half a packet of chocolate thinking it would be more than enough. Turns out I overheated it in the microwave and poof, it was all gone to waste! So we opted for nutella instead, which was abit dry because of the cold weather and we tried to pop it into the microwave for a bit but it was still abit stiff as you can see....

Spanish Churros:

Serves around 4

Ingredients:
80g butter
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 cup of water
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 eggs
1 cup of plain flour
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 cup of nutella or plain chocolate (melted)
(extra cinnamon and caster sugar to make cinnamon sugar)

Method:

See video link above

And while we were making churros, MK's aunt was making these perfect pork and chive dumplings:

And here's Momo: 

 (he grew to be a massive dog and I'm ashamed to say that I don't think I will be returning any soon, because my fear have just been renewed...) 

Orange Poppyseed Muffins

It's been raining non-stop these past few days, and it's not good for my mood. No really, it's not! Mornings with no sun feel like it's already the end of the day, that's it - rain = lazy me. But lazy me still doesn't get too lazy to crave some homemade stuff so after much contemplating, I thought here we go, maybe some freshly baked orange poppyseed muffins might brighten the day up- well at least it brightened my tummy up for quite a bit! Enjoy!

Orange Poppyseed Muffins

Recipe adapted from here

Makes 12

Ingredients:

• 1 tbs poppy seeds
• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 1/2 cups self-raising flour
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 125g butter, melted
• 2 eggs, lightly whisked
• 2 tsp finely shredded orange rind
• 1/3 cup fresh orange juice
• Icing sugar, to dust

1. Preheat oven to 190°C. Line 12 1/3 cup capacity muffin holes with non-stick muffin liners. Combine the poppy seeds and 1/4 cup of the milk in a small bowl. Set aside for 10 minutes.
2. Combine the flour and the sugar in large bowl. Add the poppy-seed mixture along with remaining milk, butter, egg, orange rind and juice, and stir with a metal spoon until just combined (do not overmix).

3. Spoon the batter among prepared muffin pans. Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centres comes out clean. Remove from oven and turn onto a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature dusted with icing sugar.

Passionfruit Melting Moments

Yes, it's the weekend, plus we get a long weekend down here in Australia because of the Queen's Birthday! (woo!) Melting moments are one of my favourite biscuits of all time, but why must they contain so much butter?? Well instead of totally avoiding them, I reckon it can be put in the category of 'once in a while" recipes... Have a lovely long weekend fellow Aussies and happy baking! 

Passionfruit Melting Moments

Recipe adapted from here:

(Makes around 30 cookies)

For the biscuits:

• 250g unsalted butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1/2 cup pure icing sugar, sifted
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1/3 cup cornflour
• 
  
• 1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
• 2. Using an electric mixer, cream butter, vanilla and icing sugar until light and fluffy. Sift flours over butter mixture. Beat on low speed until a soft dough forms.
• 3. Roll heaped teaspoonfuls of mixture into small balls. Place on trays. Using a fork dipped in flour, lightly flatten each biscuit until 1cm thick. Bake for 15 minutes or until firm. Cool on trays for 10 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
• 
  

• Passionfruit filling:
• 60g butter, softened
• 1 large passionfruit (I used canned passionfruit puree and it worked fine)
• 1 cup pure icing sugar, sifted

1.  Using an electric mixer, beat butter until light and fluffy. 

2. Stir in passionfruit pulp and icing sugar.

To assemble: 

Spread flat side of 1 biscuit with 1 teaspoon filling. Top with another biscuit. Repeat with remaining biscuits and filling. Dust with icing sugar. Serve.

Would greatly appreciate it if someone could give a healthier version of these cookies without any compromise on taste and texture!!