October is nearing and we are reminded of National breast Cancer month when pink items start popping up on shelves. I must admit that my favourite supermarket chocolate bar is the Kit Kat. I only like certain ones though being the Chunky Cookie Dough and the Temptations Cafe Latte. The other ones don’t really do much for me
.
Of course having a slavish addiction to the colour pink means that I am obliged to try the two new pink Kit Kats: one regular and one chunky ($1.69 at most supermarkets).
They’re not quite as pretty close up and you can see the strawberry wafer peeking through the top. Of course its a little fake in flavour but what else would you expect I suppose but the faux strawberry taste/smell is a bit overpowering in the regular one. The chunky one has a better chocolate to strawberry wafer ratio as there is a thicker layer of chocolate to counter the faux strawberry.
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
September 16, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
For some reason I always feel that my fridge is not complete without a tub of sour cream in it. Problem is, I don’t cook things with sour cream very often except for cakes and the occasional lot of nachos and since I am a fridge nazi that doesn’t let anything go off, I find myself scrambling to make a batch of something, usually cake-like, that requires sour cream. I always try and bake with it as I know it produces a moist cake and today I had some bananas that looked like they needed eating.
It turns out these bananas actually didn’t need eating once I opened them up. Has anyone noticed that since the “banana crisis” in Australia subsided, bananas that look black on the outside turn out to be nowhere near super ripe as they look? They must be storing them differently or doing something different.
I found this recipe from the Taste site and it comes highly recommended. It was very nice but I think I’d change the icing to a cream cheese icing. Banana cake and cream cheese work so well together but I am biased as cream cheese icing is my favourite icing. I also added some cinammon which I also think goes so well with bananas. As I had just bought some new cookie cutter to use as fondant cutters for cupcakes, I made these as cupcakes instead of a large cake. I baked the larger cupcakes (in the swirl papers at the very bottom of the page) for 20 minutes and the smaller ones (in the white pleated cups) for 15 minutes.
The tops were made using my new cutters from Davis & Waddell bought in Myer where they have a ring of 12 shapes for $9 as they had a 30% off deal (usually $12.95 RRP). They’re pretty good value as I have seen cutters for a lot more per cutter.
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
September 16, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
So it was the APEC long weekend and since it is now Springtime we thought it would be ideal to go for a picnic. Not so when the weather refuses to behave. So we did what anyone that fears the elements does when there are intermittent showers, we had the picnic indoors!
I made something that when I first tried when I was in London, a chicken stuffing sandwich. Yes just the stuffing, no chicken and yes its damn good. I hear your gasps of disgust but stay with me. All you do is take a panini roll or bread and slice horizontally (I really like the long and fat Bake at Home Panini rolls) and lightly toast the inside. Then butter inside, spread some tangy caeser dressing and avocado on both sides and top with broken up chicken stuffing. Sounds gruesome? Yes I admit it does, but you have to try it!
What next…. I had some cold BBQ chicken and avocado and some soft 9 grain bread so of course it was the traditional chicken and avocado sandwich with salt and white pepper only thankyou!
Then I constructed a salad made up of baby spinach leaves, reggiano, avocado, sun dried tomatoes, olives and crisped proscuitto and dressed that with a creamy caesar dressing.
To round off our indoor picnic I added some organic Medjool dates, Jindi chive & garlic cheddar cheese and mini papaya & coconut muffins
And yes we unfurled the tartan picnic blanket to add to the “picnic” atmosphere!
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
September 16, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
I was incredibly fearful that these would be hideous and not work as the “pastry” appeared to be a gooey mess that would be completely unworkable. Little did I know, that is what it is like! I followed Nigella Lawson’s recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess for Processor Danish Pastry (which she assures us, is how Danish pastry is made in Denmark nowadays). She did mention the words “gooey mess” but I thought that after being refrigerated overnight that it would “toughen” up as her next instructions are to roll it. I tried rolling it with a rolling pin where chaos ensued and the sticky gooey dough completely stuck to the rolling pin. Luckily, the high butter content meant that I could just spread and shape it with my hands and I made some Chocolate ones (using Nutella) and some Custard ones as I didn’t have the almonds or ricotta cheese in her recipes. I’ll try those next, and this ended up being one of the biggest baking successes notwithstanding how badly I thought that I’d thought they’d turn out! They are freakishly light and melt in the mouth, much more so than the croissant-y ones that you tend to find a bakeries. My husband thought that I had somehow stumbled upon the Krispy Kreme secret of sweet melt in the mouthness. I’m just glad they didn’t turn out as badly as I thought they would lol
Oh and I ran out of icing sugar after my mega cupcake making incident so I didn’t get to put the lovely white stripes over them-sorry!
Click here to read the full story
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
September 16, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
“Hey woman, get in the kitchen and make me a chicken pot pie!” are the words of Cartman from South Park that go around in my head when I make this. I improvised this as I figured that I could approximate a chicken pot pie without having a recipe. I used a BBQ chicken as I can’t stand the smell of raw chicken and fried onions, a clove of garlic, some carrots, peas and sweetcorn. I then added some cream of chicken soup (reconstituted) and let it cool. There’s shortcrust pastry on the bottom and puff pastry on top (both bought Pampas pastry, I am not mentally ready to tackle home made pastry) with some leaves. if I could make one of those little magpies singing out of the top I would but that seems a little extreme. Its actually better cold the next day in a way although the buttery pastry suffers as its always better out of the oven.
Click here to read the full story
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
September 16, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
What is NQN up to now?
NQN on Facebook
RSS
