Lemon butter cake

You need about - roughly- 4 lemons for this recipe.
I used 250g butter
2 cake tins
400g castor sugar (about 2 and a quarter cups)
4 eggs
3 cups self raising flour
A drop of vanilla essence. Or about a small teaspoon.
160ml of lemon juice
1.5 table spoons of fresh fine cut lemon rind. The finer the better.
Step 1.
Beat the butter and castor sugar together, preferably using an electrical food mixer. I like to slice up the butter into smaller cubes and manually mix it with the sugar before I switch on the machine. It will take the machine about 15 minutes or so to cream the butter and sugar together until it becomes light and creamy. You can also now add a drop of vanilla essence as the machine is mixing it up.
Step2
While the machine is busy at work. Grease the tins - with the butter wrapper- then line the tins with baking paper.
Step3
Add the eggs. One at a time. If you add them all in at the same time they glug up and look an awful looking mess. Beat the mixture using the machine.
Step 4
Add the lemon rind and juice and stir. I sieve the lemon juice to prevent seeds and the pulp from getting inside.
Step 5 Nearly done. Switch off the machine
Add in the flour one cup at a time - but only manually stir the mix. Don't try and handle the flour too much.
Pour the mix into the 2 tins. They should both weight about 2 pounds each.
Bake for 40 - 50 minutes at 170C.
Use a skewer to see if its done inside only at the 40 minute mark.
If so, pull them both out of the oven and their baking tins. Leave the baking paper on til they cool.

Orange Cake

The Ingriedients below make one 2 pound cake.

125g Butter
1/4 cup Milk
1/4 cupOrange Juice
2 eggs
3/4 cup Caster Sugar
1.5 cups Self Raising Flour
Orange Zest - from 2 Oranges
One Pinch of Salt
One Drop of Vanilla Essence

Preliminary
Put the Waxing/Baking Paper into the tin. Lightly butter the insides of paper/tin by using the wrapping paper of the butter.
Turn on and Preheat the Oven to 180C.

Make sure the ingredients are at room temperature - otherwise they don't gel so well. This applies esp to the butter. If the butter is stone cold - a problem in Melbourne's colder months - it will take forever for it to be mixed in with sugar.

Step 1.Make sure Butter is at room temp - soft to the touch; if not microwave it for 5 seconds. Cream the Butter and the Sugar ONLY. Stir them around til the Sugar is fully mixed in with the butter and you get that lovely yellow texture look. Don't stir for too long (like 30 minutes) to avoid the butter changing back to oil. Throw in a pinch of salt too.

Step 2.Add Eggs and Stir that in well. Turn on and Preheat the Oven to 180C.

Step 3.Add half a cup of Milk now. Stir well. You can also add in a small teardrop of vanilla essence. Or if you want you can do this when you pour the flour in.

Step 4 Sift the SR Flour and add it in. Once you have added the flour don't stir it around too much. Do this manually by hand and not by machine. As you stir it - add in the *half cup of orange juice (OJ) and the orange zest (taken from 2 Oranges). I like to add in chopped sliced mandarin skin.
Do not mix the milk and the orange juice simultaneously because the OJ makes the milk curdle.

Note on Orange Zest - do yourself a favor and get a nice hand held Orange Zester that can really scrub away at the orange skin. I bought mine from Kmart - a Swiss made one that cost $10. Its fantastic! The trick is to remove the orange part of the skin without getting the white stuff, which like the seed, makes it bitter.

I also like to throw in one Mandarin skin as well but I make sure I remove as much of the white part of the skin as possible. Remove all seeds - they make it bitter.)

(Note on OJ - I don't like adding the milk together with the OJ on account of the juice causing the milk to curdle. So I like to add the OJ and rind last as I'm stiring the flour in.

Step 5: Pour the cake mix into the baking tins. Then place them into the oven.

Step 6: Wait 40 minutes. Open the Oven door and use a small skewer (like a satay stick) to poke into the cake's interior. Examine the skewer - if wet soggy lumps of unbaked cake mix cling to it then close the oven door and bake it for another few minutes. If its done, the skewer should pull out fairly cleanly.

Step 7: Once its done - take the cake out of the oven and take out the cake from the tin immediately to prevent residual baking. And let it cool. Warning. If your cake did not bake properly - it will disintegrate as you dump it out of the tin. That's why you need to use that wooden skewer to test it.

If you don't have Orange Juice or Oranges - I guess you can use Orange Marmalade. Perhaps 4? tablespoons of OM should be ok (I'm really not sure). You should need to be careful adding that sort of stuff as the more liquid/sugar you put inside - the wetter the cake will be etc..)

Generally I prefer to double up on this recipe because butter is usually sold in 250g blocks - its also easier to measure half cups rather than quarter cups. But you will get two 2 pound cakes out of this. So you need two separate cake tins.

So if you use a 250g block. You need

Two baking tins
250g butter
1.5 cups Sugar
4 eggs
0.5 cups Milk
0.5 cups Orange Juice
2 tablespoons Orange Zest (or the zest from two Oranges)
3 cups Self Raising Flour, Sifted
1 small teaspoon Vanilla and salt

Note: Make sure you do not add extra flour.

One pot cooks all - Easy healthy vegan meals

Sometimes I like to go super healthy and easy.

This is an easy meal to make and good to solve digestion / constipation issues.

You need a rice cooker.

And ingredients - brown rice, 

carrots, garlic, Japanese sweet potato, green leafy vegetables, herbs.

optional salmon belly.

Cooking time 30 minutes.

First you give the rice a rinse in water. Then you put one cup of it into the rice cooker. Its roughly one cup of rice per person. Add two and a half cups of water. 

Chop the garlic, carrot, and sweet potato into bite size pieces and add it in the rice cooker. Add a bit of fennel seeds if you like.

A slice of garlic helps increase your immunity, preventing colds/flus etc.. Don't add to much otherwise you'll reek.

Fennel helps digestion and prevents bloating.

Sweet potato helps digestion and prevents stomach cancer.

Carrots helps add natural sweetness and improved eye sight.

Brown rice has vastly more nutrition than white rice.

White rice is like white bread - very little nutrition, plenty of starch, plenty of sugar, practically zero roughage.  Eat white rice daily and you'll experience insulin problems which may lead to diabetes.

Add pepper and salt for taste.

Turn on the rice cooker. :)

 Once its finished you can add in some fresh (room temperature) salmon and the natural residual heat from the rice cooker will cook the salmon to perfection. If you do this - wait 5 minutes while the salmon naturally cooks in the cooker.

Dish and serve - I like to add baby spinanch leaves, rocket and chilli into the mix now. Don't forget to wash the green leafy vegetables ;)

I'm too tired to cook lamb chops low carbs recipe

I'm too tired to cook lamb chops low carbs recipe

January 17, 2012 at 12:23pm

PublicFriendsFriends except AcquaintancesOnly MeCustomClose FriendsfamilySee all lists...Melbourne, Victoria, Australia AreaLimited ProfileScuba buddiesScuba DiversNuku`alofa AreaNukalofa, Tongatapu, Tonga AreaSingapore AreaPADISingapore, Singapore AreaFamilyAcquaintancesGo Back

It was too hot and I was feeling too tired to cook dinner last night. But I felt I should still cook something otherwise I'd be waking up at 3am and devour junk food.

I had a small pack of lamb chops, 2 pieces, which I had just bought.

What I did was to put the lamb chops into a steel pot. rubbed it with a little cooking oil and pepper and sea salt with a metal spoon and threw it crushed garlic (well, in this case a couple of tablespoons from a small jar of garlic that I had in the back of my fridge), chopped a carrot to add inside and threw in some mushrooms and sprinkled it with dried chilli flakes. Total time that took me - 10 mins max.

Turned the fire to low heat. Covered the pot and went to watch TV for 30+ mins. Sprinkled Italian herbs and ground fennel and aniseed inside.

Came back, stirred it around. Covered the pot again and did Facebook for 20+ mins.

All done. Time to eat.

The key is to have the fire on low heat. And to cover the pot.

I'm starving I want to eat some bacone fettuccine

I'm starving I want to eat some bacone fettuccine

February 7, 2012 at 12:12am

PublicFriendsFriends except AcquaintancesOnly MeCustomClose FriendsfamilySee all lists...Melbourne, Victoria, Australia AreaLimited ProfileScuba buddiesScuba DiversNuku`alofa AreaNukalofa, Tongatapu, Tonga AreaSingapore AreaPADISingapore, Singapore AreaFamilyAcquaintancesGo Back

I was planning to make an omelet using bacon rashers and eggs - but as I was dry frying the bacon - the aroma made my mouth water and  made me think of bacon mushroom fettuccine. And so I gave into the thought and made that instead for dinner. And boy was it good. Or maybe I was just starving marvin. I only had breakfast and missed a proper lunch.

OK. what you need is:
Bacon rashers - the ones where they have cut off the skin bits.
White Aussie Mushrooms
Basil / Italian Herbs
Small Carrot
Asparagus - optional
A leafy vegetable like baby spinach
White Carbonara Sauce - use Dolminos.
San Remo Spinach Fettuccine - its the green color one
Pepper/Salt

I didn't use oil. Just turn the heat low - throw in the bacon - chopped up - and let it dry fry. The bacon already has a lot of oil in its fat.
Throw some white and black pepper inside
Because I'm Asian I added in chilli flakes as well.
Once it gets sizzling throw in the mushrooms, also cut up.
Throw in the end bits of the asparagus - cut up. Add the flower bits later on as they cook faster.
Chuck in the carrot which has been finely diced up. I find that the carrot gives a nice comparative texture with the mushrooms.

Meanwhile boil the spinach fettuccine - it takes about 15 minutes full boil to cook it.

Once done - add the fettuccine into the mix to cook and pour the sauce in and the leafy vege...

After 5 - 10 minutes you're done. Time to eat.

The bacon, mushroom and carbonara sauce with the fettuccine is a real killer combo.

Scone recipe 1

This is the first baking recipe I accomplished. I find it enjoyable to mix flour, milk, some dried fruit you have in the fridge together - and after 10 mins in the oven - you come up with something 10 times better.

You need 3 cups Self-raising flour

1 and a quarter cup of milk

80g of butter

and a bowl of dried fruit - in this case, dates.

1. I cut up the dates and left them to soak in the milk because they were a little too dry.
2. Mix the Flour with the butter by rubbing them together.
3. Heat the oven to 200C
4. Clear the Bench Top and sprinkle ordinary flour on it. Rub some of that on your hands to prevent the dough from sticking.
5. Mix the Buttered Flour with the Dates to form the dough - in the bowl.
6. Take it out and stretch or roll the dough out.
7. You can cut the scones out or I just tear them out and pat them to shape.
8. Put them on the baking tray and into the oven they go.
9. After 10 - 15 minutes they're done.
10. Don't leave them on the hot baking tray - place them on the serving plate.