Finally, some recipes

I'm sorry! More cakes from work - they're the only thing I've made lately worth blogging about. Here we have a lemon sponge cake with lemon butter cream and passion fruit icing.

The cake recipe is my standard, no-fuss, easy-to-convert recipe I use practically every shift.

• 3 cups plain flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup liquid (juice, water, milk)

Mix everything together, pour into two 24" cake tins and bake at 180C for 30 to 45 minutes, or until cake starts to come away from the sides of the tin and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
To make this cake I added the zest and juice of a lemon and used water for the liquid. The filling is icing sugar, lemon essence, Nuttelex and soy milk, and the topping is passion fruit pulp and icing sugar.

This next fellow I'm extremely proud of: gluten free chocolate orange Bundt cake. Look at it, it's gorgeous!

I adapted the chocolate cake recipe from Kittee Kake's Papa Tofu zine.

• 3 cups flour (to make this gluten free I used a combination of 1 cup buckwheat, 1 1/2 cup rice, 1/2 cup tapioca starch, 1/2 cup soy flour, and added 1/2 tsp guar gum)
• 2 cups sugar
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• zest of one orange
  
• 2 cups orange juice
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tbs vegetable oil
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbs apple cider vinegar

Sift the flours, gum, cocoa and baking powder and mix with remaining ingredients. Pour into a greased Bundt tin and bake for 30 to 45 minutes. Make sure to test the cake with a skewer before removing from the oven.
Once cool, I topped this with a really simple chocolate icing made with cocoa, icing sugar and orange juice.

Finally we have a toasted coconut cream cake with passion fruit butter cream (we have a lot of passion fruit to use at the moment...)

This was made using the standard plain cake recipe, with 1/4 cup dessicated coconut added, only 1/3 cup of oil used, 2/3 cups of coconut cream added, and 2/3 of liquid instead of a whole cup. The icing was made using coconut cream, icing sugar, passion fruit pulp, Nuttelex and a little water.

Smoothie

I've been a little bit smoothie-obsessed lately. It's hardly appropriate weather for a tall icy glass of creamy goodness, but I can't help it. Maybe it's because they cost me next to nothing to make, thanks to my thriftiness stockpiling old bananas in the freezer. Yesterday it was frozen banana and papaya with spelt milk (!? So good!) and chia seeds. Pictured here is one from a few mornings ago - banana and peanut butter with rice milk and chia seeds. I love the way chia seeds go all gooey in liquid, like tiny tapioca pearls. Omega 3 and 6 crunchy goodness! Mmmm...

More work treats

Seems all I post about now is stuff I've made at work! This time it's Friday's shift:

Gluten free banana blueberry muffins (these were awesome!)

Gluten free orange cake with passionfruit icing (I tried only a few crumbs of this so don't know too much about the tecture, but the orange flavour was really lovely)

Gluten free chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting (again didn't try this, but I think next time it could do with more cocoa). We have a HUGE bucket of organic peanut butter that needs using up so all week at least one treat has featured it. Next week won't be any different I think!

Just another Monday

Well, it's Thursday now, but these gluten-free peanut butter choc chip brownies were made by me at work on Monday. I'm trying to make most of the things I bake at work gluten-free, and luckily there are a bunch of flours to combine and experiment with. This was my first attempt at gf brownies and they ended up a little dry, but gorgeous - look at that swirly peanut butter!

Damn good cherry pie

Oh my, am I the worst or what!? Where have I been? Up to my eyeballs in assignments and exams; socialising like a celebrity; sulking because it's getting too dark too early to take nice photos; and generally eating out or really badly and not wanting to let you all know! But here is a little something to let you know I'm still capable of creating nice things in the kitchen: my very first cherry pie.

I followed the recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking, and was pleased at how straightforward it was. For some reason I thought a cherry pie would be really difficult to make, but considering the fruit is ready to use straight out of a jar (I used Morello cherries) there's actually less prep-work needed that an apple or peach pie. I let the filling sit for a little too long, and I think this caused the corn flour to not thicken and dissolve as much as it should have, but this was still pretty amazing. Extremely sweet, but amazing.

The next one I make needs to be served at a Twin Peaks marathon with a whole lot of hot black coffee.

Get pie

While I was in Brisbane I had the pleasure of spending the day with my lovely friend Chloe. We baked one hell of a berry pie. Oh did I tell you? I'm pie-crazy right now. The recipe came from a slick looking black metal cookbook, but was actually a bit of a shambles. We had to rely on our common sense and superior baking skills, so sadly there isn't really a recipe. I can tell you though that it was freaking amazing.
Blueberry, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry. Hell yes!

Feeding interstate

Back in Melbourne and it's fridge scraps and frozen food for me. Here's a look at some brighter days from my holiday in Brisbane:
Okinomiyaki by Lena and rice pockets by Alex;

If human blood tasted like this cold-pressed coffee from Black Star cafe in West End I would totally become a creature of the night (hint: it's a little like melted ice-cream, a lot like happiness).

What would a trip to Brisbane be without the traditional stomach-punish at Kuan Yin in the Valley? 'Beef' rib soup, 'chicken' drumsticks, fried 'calamari', and Taiwanese crispy 'chicken' with rice. Sadly one of the meals (not pictured) came with weevils in it, but the staff were super apologetic and comped us two meals.

My last stop was City Wok. In the city. I finally found the amazing dish I had the first time I was there: dry noodle wanton something something. Lena's Singapore noodles were pretty good too.