Cooking Crusade

I love throwing together easy, simple ingredients to make a delicious dinner for myself and my fiance.

On this particular night, I wanted to make something Moroccan spiced to go with my new cous cous craze and this is kind of what I came up with and Mike and I were pretty pleased with the results. Definitely going to keep this one around for time to come! I love throwing things in the oven and then coming back later and dinner is pretty much done. It also gives you an opportunity to clean up all of the mess that you created (which I tend to do quite a lot) in the process.

Ok! Lets get started.

Ingredients: Serves 2.
4 chicken thighs (this makes a big dinner! if you are a girl, like me, you may just want 1 chicken thigh for yourself. keep the remaining in the fridge to slice for a sanger. brill!)
2 teaspoons of moroccan spice
1 teaspoon of garlic powder (optional)
1/2 a cup of plain flour
some olive oil.

Line a baking tray with some baking paper and preheat the oven to about 180 deg C. In a small bowl, blend together flour and spices.

Rub your chicken thighs with about a teaspoon of oil or less per thigh.

Dip each thigh into flour/spice mixture until thoroughly coated and place on baking tray.

Repeat until all chicken is coated.

Chicken after abou 1 hour – golden brown.

Bake in a hot oven for about 1 hour, or until golden and crispy. Occasionally turn then about every 20-30 minutes to evenly brown them.

You could take them out at 1 hour and they would be fine, but if you have some extra time, 1.5 hours turns the thigh meat into a dark golden, lovely colour and the meat literally falls apart.

Chicken after 1.5 hours – dark golden brown and.. amazing.

Serve with cous cous and steamed greens and most of all.. Enjoy!

xx

Christine

I’ve finally put a bit of time aside to blog about that Bulldogs cake I was talking about in my previous post (A Fight with Fondant.)

The stats:
The cake was a Pioneer Woman Chocolate Sheet Cake (can’t go wrong there), sandwiched with a whipped hazelnut and chocolate ganache (cream cheese + a lot of nutella, blended together… cooled in the fridge until quite solid and then whipped again, quite airy) covered with home-made marshmallow fondant (melted marshmallows and icing sugar) and coconut (well, that was the grass decorations).

The cake topper and the edible NRL image I got from Little Dance Decorations online. The only problem I had with the little bulldog guy was where to stick him in the cake. He wouldn’t stand upright… So I made him a little fondant pedestal to stand on in front of the cake..lol.

This was the first time I had ever used fondant, so my results were a bit wonky. I also did not have a fondant smoother which apparently, complicates things. In addition to the fact that I used a somewhat slippery ganache did not help matters.

But hey, a first’s a first.

To be honest most of this cake was a mistake. I hadn’t actually planned any of it, but I was inspired to make goal posts out of long skewers (which also helped stop the cake layers from sliding away, again, slippery ganache!) The dyed coconut grass was actually to hide a multitude of sins (i.e. messy fondant.. lol). Everyone seemed to be quite surprised when I mentioned these were all mistake-hiders,.. so I guess some mistakes are a good thing sometimes? I tend not to plan out my cake decorating (usually when I do, I almost always forget something and get disappointed when I remember it later.) So generally now, I kind of decorate out of instinct (by which of course I actually mean, what’s in the cupboard.)

Have a great weekend!

This lovely apple cake is great for dessert, or having friends round as a tea cake. It’s also good for picnics or as something to take along to a BBQ. It’s incredibly simple and very delicious.

Usually with this apple cake, you fill your cake tin halfway with your cake mix, then layer your sliced apples in the middle and add in the rest of your cake mix, so the apples bake in the middle of the cake which is quite good, but for this version, I layered the apple slices on top of the cake and drizzled it with a caramel sauce, which resulted in a crispy top with caramel apples.

Ingredients:
100 grams of butter
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups of self raising flour
1 teaspoon of cinnamon (I like to use mixed spice)
1 large granny smith apple

Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Melt butter. Cool (to avoid cooking the eggs), then mix with eggs. Sift flour and add in sugar/spices. Add egg/butter mixture to flour mixture and stir until combined. Cake mixture should be quite thick. Peel, core and slice apple. Line a cake tin and pour in half of your cake mix and smooth, layer apple slices. Add the rest of your cake mix and bake in hot oven for about 40 minutes or until golden brown and top of cake springs back at touch.

Alternatively:
Pour all of cake mixture into cake tin. Layer apple slices on top of cake.

Drizzle over a caramel sauce (1/2 cup of cream, 3 tablespoons of butter and 1/2 cup of brown sugar, heated in a saucepan until thickened) on the apples

Bake until top is golden and crisp (bottom of cake will still be moist.)

Enjoy with friends and a cup of tea! This cake is also lovely, slightly warmed with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

xox