Wednesday, 27 April 2011

Just can't get enough flowers!

Collection of the last weeks worth of arrangements. Below is something you will find on Pearson's Florist Website . Just my version considering it is an out of season product. This sells for $220.00
In the last image, don't know if you can see properly. But stems had orchids spiralled around them, so the vase looks like its filled with orchids but oh wait!  an arrangement on the top :-O Wowerz! And to all my little anonymous lurkers, please leave a comment. They do make me happy. I feel like a crazy person who blogs to myself in third person. I'm also open to baking suggestions or request or flower advice. PS SYDNEY-ERS MOTHERS DAY IS COMING UP, I HOPE YOU REMEMBERED TO GET YOUR MUMMY'S SOMETHING NICE. 8TH MAY, SUNDAY!!

Also just wanted a little shout out; Jay Park today released his MV for Abandoned . Was on my phone on the way to work at 5:50AM buying it off itunes. Support Kpop artists!! 
Peace~

Monday, 25 April 2011

Something bittersweet

I'm baaacccckkk!!
Its currently 5:15pm on a Monday. And thanks to the (extra) long weekend, I can sleep till my hearts content. I originally planned to bake something yesterday for Easter's sake, but who could resist sleeping all day when its raining and 17 degrees outside?
Originally I had planned on baking a dense chocolate cake, but then I thought.. what am I supposed to do with it afterwards. I can't shouldn't eat it all. So my opp was to go for brownies!!!
and as you guys know I never completely follow a recipe, what I did to this one was add 1/4 C flour more a bit more 20gm more chocolate (purely cause I was too lazy to measure 180gm since I had a 200gm pack) and I added 3tbs coffee granules diluted in 1/2C boiling water (cooled of course)   And rather than just dusting them all in icing sugar. Why not make a chocolate ganache sauce for it too? (I'm so bad)


recipe here!

Saturday, 16 April 2011

Flowers flowers and more flowers!

Just a catch up of the pretty flower things I've done in the past weeks.



 So, we've got the posies, rose posies, rose bouquets, all round arrangements, front facing arrangements and modern designs. (inspired by my colleague from germany)
And I was quite please to see that one of my arragements will be part of our Easter range that is available at our website. Order now for Easter and Mother's Day!!
Website photo by Tony Vu a big thank you to him.

Fresh home made pizzas

Couple nights ago I was searching up places to eat on urbanspooon, a couple pizza places popped up in searches which made me think. 'Hey I remember making pizza from scratch in food tech in high school'.
Which made me go out (well.. online) to find a recipe for pizza bases. And while talking to one of my workers about pizza bases, she mentioned to me that some dough recipes have too much of a yeast smell. (..haha..eww)
But from taste.com there were a couple recipes for the bases. One that I picked to make seemed very easy and simple. Of course with a few of my adjustments to suite my kitchen and pantry.

Ingredients:
1.5 C Warm water
2 tsp dried yeast
pinch of sugar
4 C plain flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 C olive oil + extra for brushing

So, because its a very cold autumns day, I turn on the oven on high and leave the door slightly open just to create a warmer room and also warm up the stove area for later.
Combine the yeast together with sugar and water, and the first time I did this I mixed the yeast into the water but that just made the water murky and look like a diluted chai latte. So starting again in a cup/bowl. Yeast, sugar and warm water. Leave it. And approximately (I got distracted watching anime) 5 minutes later it was foamy like it should be.

In a separate bowl; flour and salt, leaving a well in the middle for the yeasty water and olive oil. Using a spatula cut into the mixture to combine it evenly together.

And onto the working bench or chopping board dust of flour and the crumbly dough. Knead the dough evenly bringing in all the dry bits and making the whole dough come together nicely.
After a couple minutes of kneading you'll notice the dough becoming more elastic, which is what you're trying to achieve. Knead a couple more minutes and roll it into a neat ball.

In a large clean bowl, spray with oil or just a tablespoons worth of oil spread around in the bottom of the bowl.
Place the dough into the bowl, tossing it around a bit just to coat the whole ball in oil and cling wrap it very well leaving it aside at room temp to rise. This is where my open oven comes in, I left the bowl on my stove top to stay warm.
On the website, it said that the dough would take 30 minutes to rise and almost double in size.



And 30 minutes later, don't know if you would say doubled. But it is alot more!

When you open your bowl of dough to split up the portions, you will notice that the dough is extremely fluffy and airy. So I did a little test to see the difference in re-kneading the dough and just leaving it.
For my first pizza, I kneaded the dough to make it elastic again before spreading it across the baking pan.
Where as the second portion I spread onto the pan straight away.


Pizza re-knead on the left was alot more dense that the base of the pizza on the right. And even though I accidently left the pizza on the right in for a bit too long. It was still alot more fluffier than the re-kneaded pizza.

Lazy Rainy Sunday's

This weeks oven surprise is raspberry lime and coconut friands!! :o)
Little bombs of tarty, sweet goodiness!
So I found this recipe on taste.com for mini raspberry friands. The lime and coconut were just a combination that I like very much with raspberries.

(A week later)
Yay! I can continue this post. My internet has been down for the past week and ooooooh boy was it hell not being able to load a page other than google.
Anyways I'll just pick up where I left it last week and upload photos of the friands!!

Recipe found from facebook
I added lime rind and half the juice of a lime to batter. And sprinkled desiccated coconut instead of almonds.

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Care for a lei?

How groovy are these garlands? flower heads and buds threaded together on a fishing line. Kinda reminds you of macaroni necklaces from primary school. 

Picking off the buds and cutting off the flower heads, can be a good stress relief. Make sure to have an even amount of buds and flowers.






Complete garland. Isn't it pretty? So much better than using uncooked pasta. Perfect pre-hen's night or childrens birthday party activity.




Maybe a lei 1.5metres long is more suited for tall persons...

Monday, 4 April 2011

Just baked a batch and almost scone!

I remember the first time I tried a scone at QVB's the tea room. It was a little crunchy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. With a doughy taste with a hint of milk, and when you combine it with a reckless dollop of clotted cream and berry jam...oh. ya-uummmm! thats heaven.
Looking around online I couldn't find simple recipes, there was either too much butter, too much milk, not enough milk, adding preservatives or just some crazy mumbo jumbo stuff.
That was until I came across this recipe. At first I was a bit sceptical on whether there were enough ingredients going into it. But then I thought why not try and wing it?
So, ingredients;
2 C self raising flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup cream ( I bought a 300ml tub of cream and just used half)
1/2 cups of milk

Oven to 220'C (I've got a really old crappy oven so depending on whether yours is strong or not adjust to what you think would be reasonable, but they're only gonna be in there for about 10mins)

1. Sift all the dry ingredients together into a large bowl
2. Fold the cream in with a butter knife, mix until you get a some what crumbly mixture
3. Add milk, and mix with knife until almost evenly moist.
4. Flour your bench and smack your onto the bench
5. Not so much kneading, but I just brought the edges in making it neater and less likely to crumble about around the edges
6. Seeing as my rolling pin is a joke of a size, I patted the dough out till 1.5cm - 2cm thick
7. Use a cookie cutter, or scone cutter (if there is such a thing). Or improvise like I did and find a reasonable sized cup
8. Punch out your pikelets of dough and lay them in the tray nicely, brushing them with milk
9. Bake for 10 mins, or a little bit longer until they're golden. But best to check at 10 mins.

I got 9 good scones out of a batch, with one extra dud I squished in the side made from the left over dough. And you can see the funny shaped one below was one of my duds. Haw haw.

Saturday, 2 April 2011

Its a Saturday night

So, its 11:53PM and I've got the munchies. So first thing I do is look up food recipes in forums, youtube, google, anywhere really.
And so that leads me to this..